


Strays

by MountainGoats



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Canon, F/M, Language Barrier
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-01
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-04-07 02:06:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 28,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4245438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MountainGoats/pseuds/MountainGoats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alternate start where Bull and Female Lavellan meet several days before the start of the game. Contains AU elements but runs parallel to the in-game canon. Warnings in place for violence and a brief scene of attempted non-con.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Strays

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was derived from several prompts at the kink-meme. I hope you enjoy!

You couldn’t kill snow, and that was frustrating.

The Iron Bull knew that it was usually asking for too much, but when came to things he hated, he preferred them to have a healthy capacity for death. If such a thing could die, than Bull could stick an axe into it, and hey, problem solved.

It had worked for the Vints, it had worked for his old Sten, and on one memorable occasion, it had kinda worked for a hideous piece of decorative pottery.

But, it did not work for snow.

Bull drew his cloak tighter against the biting chill, glaring at nothing in particular as he trudged back in the direction of camp. His “scouting” mission had proved an utter failure, but given that it was little more than an excuse to get away from the gang of assholes he was currently stuck with, Bull considered it a wash.

Or, at least, he would have considered it that, except that they were still lost, still running out of food, and he still couldn’t kill snow.

Man, did he hate the fucking snow.

His stomach growled as he wove between the trees. A rationed portion of beef this morning had not been near enough to satisfy his hunger and there was no ignoring it. Hunger always made itself known and it was very bad at sharing the spotlight. He could tell it was making the others irritable as well, and considering that they were a band of murderous thieves, he knew it would not be long before things got bloody.

That part actually sounded rather nice. He couldn’t stand the bastards, and as they were part of the reason he was wandering around the woods with his thumb up his ass, Bull figured it would be cathartic.

A strong smell of burning wood reached him well before he saw the camp. The trees in this land were fragrant to a fault and the smell of them as they burned was unmistakable. Most of the time, Bull enjoyed the woodsy aroma, but today, his mood was bad enough that he could find complaint in just about anything. Wrinkling his nose, he passed between two trees and stepped into the camp to find…

…Nothing?

Well, not nothing precisely. The fire was still there, burned down to smoking cinders, and the bedrolls were all in the same places they’d been this morning, but aside from that, nothing.

Bull frowned at the deserted camp, turning in place and scanning the nearby trees. Those idiots hadn’t really left him behind, had they? 

No, were that the case, they would have taken the bedrolls with them. It would be flat-out stupid to leave those behind.

So then, just where in the hell was everyone?

A scream answered his unspoken question. It rose from off to the right, distant, yet clearly resonant in the silent forest  
.  
Other shouts joined it almost immediately, forming a muted clamor that put Bull into motion before he even processed the implications behind it. The others may well be bastards and scoundrels, but they were also his crew and that counted for something.

He charged through the foot-deep snow, nearly stumbled twice and only just managed to avoid catching his horns in the branches of a tree. The shouts were growing sharper as he rushed forward and it wasn’t long before he burst into a small clearing and discovered the source.

The stench of blood smacked him like a fist. Bull skidded to a halt just in time to avoid trampling over Brot’s corpse. The big man was facedown in the snow, a steaming puddle of black-red blood creeping from out beneath him like a pool of spilled tar.

Brot was dead? Shit, The Ben-Hassrath were not going to like that.

Fenny Smiles lay a few yards from Brot. He’d never been a pretty man, but he’d looked a lot better this morning. Whatever weapon had caused the wound on his face had left very little intact. If it wasn’t for the red hair, Bull might not have recognized him at all.

The others were still alive though.

Grennar, Marta, and Little Rottus were all crouched in the center of the clearing, their attention focused on restraining a slender figure that was thrashing between them like a panicked nug. Ben Carver stood apart from the rest, watching them with an amused expression on his gaunt face, the longbow he always carried now cradled in the crook of one arm.

It was Ben that saw him first, and calling out in his nasally southern accent, shouted from across the clearing. “Hey Bull, bout time you showed up. Come see what we found!”

Bull spared a glance for the two corpses. Brot’s death invalidated his entire purpose for being here, but neither man was what he would consider a great loss to the world. Their deaths also didn’t change his immediate situation. He mentally shrugged before trudging over to join the others.

The rest may have survived, but they weren’t unscathed. Grennar was sporting a freshly broken nose, blood frothing from it with every snorted breath, and Marta had caught a nasty slash across her left arm if the spreading stain on her shirtsleeve was any indication.

Bull started to ask what had happened, but then he caught sight of their prize and drew up short.

The elven woman looked small beneath the three humans. She lay on her back, a blanket of animal skins spread out underneath her pinned form. Her clothing was fashioned from leather, deer hide by the looks of it, and the workmanship was elevated. The pale, doeskin breeches would have fetched a high price in any market, and the leather shirt she wore had been tanned and tailored with a master’s skill. Her skin glowed bronze in spite of the season, her hair a curious shade of dark, marbled grey. Not black, precisely, but rather like the eddying smoke from a wild fire.

She was also in a full panic. Her slender arms held trapped beneath Marta’s knees, and while she fought to kick her legs free of Grennar’s hold, it was clear that she was on the wrong side of a losing battle.

Little Rottus sat straddling her narrow hips. He was a foul sort of man and the cruel smirk stretching over his pox-marked face only detracted from his appeal. Glancing up at Bull, he waved a hand at their captive. “She’s one of them Daelish elves. I didn’t think they came this far south.”

Bull ignored him. An ugly bruise was already forming on the elf's right cheek and blood trickled from a cut on her brow. Her large eyes were livid, and the furious sounds she was making were illegible through the wad of fabric that’d been shoved between her teeth.

“The bitch killed Brot.” Marta snarled, twisting a hand in the elf’s dark hair and pulled at it sharply until the little thing yowled like an angry cat. “Gutted him when he tried to grab her. I say we cut her knife ears off, teach her a lesson.”

Rottus giggled, his high-pitched voice almost girlish in his excitement. “Later, luv, later. You can have what’s left after we’ve had a go at her.”

He groped the elf’s chest through her shirt as he spoke, prompting her to buck against him and snarl wordlessly. Rottus giggled again, moving so that he could begin unfastening the thin belt at her waist.

Bull realized his hands had tightened into heavy fists. He stood frozen, watching as the elf struggled and Little Rottus tugged her leather breeches off of her hips. There was a moment, an awful moment, when he felt that he might do nothing.

Four years playing the role of Tal-Vashoth. Three of which were spent as a mercenary, taking work that varied between reclaiming the High Steppes and stabbing cutthroats in the back alleys of Denerim. He’d murdered plenty of men without knowing the reason behind it. These last few months, he had lowered himself to the role of a bandit and accepted the evil as part of the necessary.

It all changed him. Bull was no longer than man who had left Par Vollen those many years before. He’d gotten too good at ignoring his conscience, at molding himself into the temporary roles required for his work. A degree of indifference was important. Standing by while one atrocity played out could very well mean the prevention of countless more.

He knew this. The Qun demanded necessity above all else. Bull had heard the lessons, preached them on occasion, even. Distance was a virtue.

In spite of that, when he looked down at the elf, frightened and desperate in her attempts to get free, the Iron Bull experienced anger. Not a rationed anger, but more that other kind. The sort that burned away the semblances of civility. This was the anger the Qun warned against, a virulent, consuming rage that fed upon everything else. 

“Stop.”

He hadn’t realized he’d spoken until the word was already out. Bull didn’t say it loud, but there was something there that made everyone go still.

“Eh?” Rottus peered at him in puzzlement. The rat-faced man had forced himself between the elf’s legs and was working his own pants undone. He hesitated as he met Bull’s eye, but then proceeded to raise his shoulders in an insolent shrug. “If you wanted first go, you should’ve been here for the fight.”

“We aren’t doing this.” Bull affirmed in the same quiet tone. He looked at his crew, meeting each of their gazes in turn. “I'm saying it now. We aren’t doing this.”

He sounded like himself. The weight of command hovered in his voice, every bit as strong and pure as new forged steel. It resonated and Bull felt a sense of surety that he had not experienced in a long time.

Then, Little Rottus snorted. “To fuck with that, I’ve always wanted to try a piece of elf cunt. You ain’t the boss just cause Brot’s dead, so you can get fucked if you got a problem with it, Bull.”

He turned back to his captive and pulled his pitiful excuse for a cock out of his trousers. Bull absorbed this development for a brief instant, and then things got bloody.

Ben Carver was first. The man was a good shot and he was unoccupied with holding down the elf. Yanking his throwing axe from his belt, Bull pivoted, pulled back his arm, and then hurled the weapon toward the man with a grunt.

It spun in the air twice before smashing into Ben’s square jaw with a sound like a block of wood being cleaved. Ben’s head snapped back and he went down without even the faintest scream.

Bull was already moving toward the others. He reached over his shoulder, caught his great axe by its haft, and slung the weapon free of its fastening just as Grennar let off a rough exclamation of surprise. 

The double-headed blade bit into the base of Little Rottus’s skull a second later. His body went into spasms on top of the elf, jerking fitfully as the last imperatives of life fled him in a rush. Bull's axe caught in his skull, sinking deep into the hard bone and catching. He swore, planted a boot onto Rottus’s shoulder and jerked three times until the blade wrenched free with a sucking rasp.

The delay cost him. Grennar had time enough to scramble to his feet and come at him with a knife. He lunged forward, barking a garbled curse as he tried to cut at Bull’s ribs.

Bull spun, swept the axe one-handed to ward off the blow and then bashed a fist against the side of the human's head. It connected with a solid crack that sent pain through his knuckles and knocked Grennar sprawling in the snow.

Swinging the axe around, Bull let loose a wordless shout as he stepped forward and brought it smashing down into the center of Grennar’s chest. Hot blood splattered across his face, the coppery reek of it stinging his eyes and filling his mouth with its metallic tang. 

Violence never tasted any different.

Footsteps crunched in the snow behind him and Bull jerked around in time to bring Marta skidding to a halt. She stumbled backwards a few steps before raising her drawn sword and leveling it at him. Her hands were shaking and the glittering point of the weapon danced in the air as she fought to keep it leveled. 

“Bastard!” The tangled locks of her hair, having fallen free from their bun in all the excitement, now fluttered about her head with every nervous twitch. She tried to glare at him, an effect that was spoiled slightly by the tremble that shook her lips. “You treacherous ox bastard!”

Bull tugged his axe from Grennar’s ribs. He rolled his shoulders, loosening them as he began to circle left to keep her in his field of vision. “You can’t beat me, Marta. Better to run and pray that I don’t follow.”

It was good advice that she ignored. Shrieking, the woman rushed him.

At her best, Marta was a decent swordswoman. In calf-deep snow, hysterical, and on an empty stomach, she was not.

Bull caught her thrust on the axe’s haft and turned in with a little twist of his shoulders. The butt of his weapon came up to thump against her flank and she let out a gasp as the breath was driven from her lungs.

Marta folded forward and Bull caught her head between the crook of his left arm. With a much harsher twist of his shoulders, he wrenched her upwards and off her feet. Gravity took over, her weight came down, and Marta’s neck snapped like a brittle twig.

Bull dropped her corpse. He stood tense, chest heaving with the rush of battle. His blood felt like it was on fire and he will still angry. He could feel that rage deep inside, thrashing, biting at him like a poorly taught beast. There were no words of the Qun to calm it now, no more members of his late crew to expend it upon. There was just him and the elf.

Oh, hey, the elf.

He turned, axe still in hand, just in time to see the elf fumbling with the clasps of her breeches as she struggled to conceal her nudity.

Shit.

Bull’s head snapped back around so fast the muscles in his neck cramped. He put his blind side to her, whether to offer a modicum of privacy or just to avoid having to meet her eye, he could not say.

Regardless, it’d been a long while since the Iron Bull felt shame. 

He sought around for some sort of distraction while he waited for the elf to compose herself. It came in the form of a crumpled pile of green cloth that lay on the ground a few yards from his feet. Walking over, he picked it up and shook it to dislodge the light coating of snow that had accumulated. 

It was a cloak, and a damn fine one at that. Lined with rabbit fur, the dark green cloth felt thick and comfortable. Silver embroidery, genuine, by the looks of it, ran along the borders to form a repeating pattern of leaves and some deer-like animal. Nobody in his crew had owned anything half so nice.

He turned to the elf.

She’d regained her feet and gotten her clothing back into sorts. There was no way to tell if her violent shivering was due to the cold or her recent ordeal, but Bull suspected it was plenty of both.

The elf sniffed, brusquely scrubbed at her eyes, then looked up and saw him.

She froze. Bull could imagine the reason. Plenty of people in these lands saw a seven-foot qunari and decided they didn’t like it. Given that he was still holding an axe and had a fair amount of Grennar’s blood on him, she was almost certainly wondering if her day was about to get even worse.

She swallowed visibly. Her eyes darted about, touching first on Marta’s discarded sword and then quickly scanning the clearing. Her posture contracted with a sudden tension, probably as she prepared to bolt, and Bull decided now was a good time to say something.

“I’m not going to hurt you.” He pitched his voice into a soothing tone as he offered out the cloak in his hand. “Here.”

The elf made no move to take it. She stared back at him with big eyes the color of polished iron, exuding a fierce scrutiny that made Bull want to look away.

Which, of course, was why he didn’t. Bull met the challenge in those eyes and endured it in as neutral a fashion as he could manage.

Slowly, she stretched out a hand, and with all the wariness of stray dog accepting a proffered treat, snatched it from his grip and darted backwards to avoid any sudden attacks.

Bull didn’t move a muscle, which resulted in another staring contest. He broke it this time, turning his back on her and walking over to where Ben Carver lay.

The man was still alive. Blood bubbled from the bisected line of his jaw and as Bull drew close, he could make out the hissing whine of the man’s breath as it whistled through his mangled face.

Bull grimaced. He’d never been the best with throwing axes.

Ben lifted a trembling hand as if to ward him away. Shaking his head slowly, Bull took up his axe to finish what he’d started. Ben Carver may have murdered his wife and then chosen to brag about it, but Bull wasn’t going to let him die slowly in the cold. Doing that would’ve said far more about the Iron Bull than it would have Ben Carver.

When it was done, he retrieved his throwing axe and took a moment to wipe it clean. Afterwards, he bent down and picked up Ben’s longbow. It wasn’t a weapon he would claim much experience with, but it was a tool and he needed anything that might help him live through the next few days.

He also took Ben’s money and the ration of salted beef from the man’s pack. He disliked stealing from the dead. He disliked starving to death even more. 

As he turned back to gather the other’s belongings, he was greeted with a sight that made him wonder if he’d misjudged things somewhat. The elf had put on her cloak, now fastened at her shoulder with a copper broach shaped like oak leaf, and in her right hand, she held an axe of her own.

It was of a design that Bull did not recognize. Short and single-bladed, the weapon had a slight curve to its haft and a short crest of bird feathers dangling from the back end of its head. She held it easily, evidently comfortable with the weapon and its weight.

Bull heaved a sigh. He understood that he wasn’t the most friendly-looking man in all of Thedas, but hadn’t he just saved her from rape and torment?

Seriously, that had to be worth something.

The elf lifted her axe, apparently to ensure it hadn’t escaped his notice, and then, with slow, very deliberate motions, lowered the weapon and slid it through a leather loop that dangled off her belt.  
Setting her jaw in a hard line, she held out her empty hands for his inspection.

Bull blinked in momentary confusion before he got the point. He maneuvered the great axe over his shoulder until it was sheathed as well. Letting the bow fall to the ground, he faced her with empty hands spread wide.

“Okay, what now?”

She jerked her chin in his direction. _“Elleth are’tist sueh?”_

“Eh?”

 _“Queth?”_ Her mouth twisted into a frown. _“Evanerum ses ipri? Cuth’allan, ipri lereis sun.”_

The language was completely foreign to Bull. It was beautiful, every bit as melodic and lilting as birdsong. She spoke it rapidly, the faint purr in her tone smoothing the consonants into a flowing cadence that made the human tongue seem coarse and erratic.

Still, she might as well have been farting smoke rings for all the sense it made to him.

Bull scratched at the base of his right horn. “Sorry, no idea what you’re going on about. I don’t suppose you speak Kosith? Brim baralt kothis?”

She shrugged at him.

“Parlez-vous orlais? 

Shrug.

“Okay, hablas antivan?”

Yet another shrug.

“That is a ‘no’, I take it?”

_“Queth?”_

“Sure, very helpful.” Bull rolled his eye and stepped over to Marta’s corpse to recover her purse. He telegraphed each movement in an effort to put the elf at ease. She still seemed shaken, and a jumpy person with easy access to an axe was never a good thing.

He took what he needed from the corpses, all the while watching the elf from the corner of his eye as he retrieved food, coin, and Grennar’s flint. She returned the favor; shooting him the odd wary glance as she bent down to retrieve a few things of her own.

By the time they’d finished, the elf had come up with a leather pack that clearly belonged to her, as well as a wooden-handled knife that looked to be made of obsidian. However, it was the last item she retrieved off the ground that gave Bull a moment’s pause.

It was a bow and quiver. This one was much shorter then Ben’s and its wooden arms curved inwards and then outwards as its ends.

He felt a little apprehensive looking at it. If she came at him with an axe, Bull was reasonably sure he could defend himself. There was considerably less chance of that if she decided to shoot him full of arrows from a distance.

The elf evidentially recognized his discomfort, because after a quick look in his direction, she held up a hand and set about unstringing it in an efficient blur of motion. Stowing the string somewhere inside her cloak, she held up the stave and nodded at him.

Fair enough. 

In the spirit of good faith, Bull did the same when he picked up Ben’s old bow. It wasn’t like the damn thing would be his first choice of weapon if this went south, and there was no harm playing along.

With no convenient excuse left for avoiding the elf he’d rescued, Bull resigned himself to an awkward conversation. She was currently in the process of examining the animal skin she’d been pinned against earlier. Little Rottus had bled all over the material, leaving it sodden and stained a dark crimson. After a cursory examination, she gave it a disgusted look and let it drop.

Bull coughed to get her attention. When he had it, he waved toward his own chest. “I’m Bull.”

She squinted at him. _“Bowl?”_

He held up two fingers and then jabbed them at his sternum. “Bull.”

“Ah," Her head bobbed and she made the same gesture toward herself. _“Reth’Lonalathus Ell Lavallan.”_

Bull stared. “Uhhhh...come again?”

She wrinkled her nose, offered him a judicial examination, then huffed before pointing at herself once more. “Reth.”

“Uh-huh, good to meet you, Reth. I’m sorry about my crew, they were shitheads in case you missed it.” He pointed at Rottus’s corpse by way of emphasis. “And really, they weren’t my crew, I just needed to pretend like they were for a while. Plus, I killed them, so let’s just call this square, huh?”

He drew a square in the air in front of him with both fingers and gave her a pointed look. Reth stared back at him, face blank.

_“Queth?”_

“Again with the ‘queth’.” Bull muttered. He was beginning to think that there was a small chance that she didn’t understand him. “Tell you what, I’ll just take that as a ‘yes’ and hope you don’t shoot me in the back. Sound fair?”

_“Q---“_

“Right, okay.” He interrupted and gave her a big wave as he turned to go. “Have a good life and all. Try not to run into more bandits.”

He started walking before he could be pulled into further conversation. Today had been the miserable icing on two months worth of shitty cake, and the last thing Bull wanted to do was try to bridge cultural divides. The Daelish girl looked in reasonably good health aside from her recent troubles, so she’d probably get along fine on her own.

Better than he would if things continued down their current path.

Bull had barely entered the tree line when he became aware of footsteps behind him. Pausing, he glanced over his shoulder and saw Reth trotting about seven yards behind.

He looked at her, she looked at him.

Bull kept walking.

Twenty steps later, he turned on his heel and faced her. “Okay, you’re following me. Why are you following me?”

She drew to a halt, keeping a generous distance between them. _“Vel’ah aret. Neverutt eres un’unoll rocades.”_ Reth pointed first to him, then to the corpses in the clearing, then to her, then finally back to him.

Bull scratched at his cheek. Was that a “thank you”? It seemed like one, but then, that might just be him projecting. He chose to take the gesture as such. “Yeah, don’t mention it. I was probably going to kill them anyway.”

Reth frowned at him before repeating her gesture: Bull, corpses, elf, Bull. _“Rocades. Reth eres vell’a Bull.”_

“Lovely, I still don’t speak elf gibberish though.”

She pointed at him _“Rocades.”_

Bull lost patience. It seemed colossally stupid that they were still trying to speak to one another when it was obvious that nothing was getting through.

He decided to make things simple. Pointing first himself, he stabbed his fingers toward his camp. “I’m going that way.” He pointed at her, and then in the opposite direction from camp. “And you’re going that way. Clear?”

The elf folded her arms and shot him a glare. _“Unth.”_

Bull may not have understood elf gibberish, but he had a very strong feeling that he’d just learned their word for “no”.

He managed to suppress a groan, regarding the little elf with a mixture of frustration and bafflement. A second ago, she’d looked ready to flee if he so much as twitched, now he couldn’t get rid of her? Craziness.

Testing the theory, he pointed to her, then to himself, and then toward camp. “You want to come with me?”

Reth nodded. _“Ivent”_

Bull palmed his face. The last thing he needed was a tag-a-long who couldn’t speak a word of any language save her own. He barely had enough food to last through the next few days if he rationed it for himself. Picking up a stray elf was hardly the best way of resolving that dilemma. 

However, supposing she did follow him, what could he do to stop her? Was he going to attack her or scream and threaten until she got the point and ran off?

She was still watching him when he looked back up. Stubborn defiance exuded from every inch of her posture. The bruise on her cheek had darkened to a nasty shade of purple and her limbs hadn’t quite lost their tremor, but her expression might as well have been carved from wood.

No, Bull admitted to himself, he wasn’t going to chase her off. The idea of showing her cruelty after having rescued her seemed…gauche?

Besides, since this was a moment of honesty, Bull couldn’t deny a certain soft spot when it came to strays.

“Fine, but I’m not sharing my food.” He grumbled, waving a hand to beckon her along. “If you fall behind I’m leaving you.”

Reth cocked her head to the side but followed once he’d started moving. Bull ignored her, irritated by his choice. The elf was a burden that he was in no state to support. This was a mistake and every piece of his training told him that he was being a fool.

Still, Bull reflected as he led them back toward camp, he had managed to find a good reason to kill Brot's crew. Cathartic didn't even begin to cover it.

You really had to take life's pleasures wherever they could be found.

~o0o~


	2. Onwards

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ~o0o~

The fire was nothing but wet cinders by the time they entered the camp.

Bull took care to search the belongings that his old crew no longer needed. He found nothing of any real consequence until he tore open Brot’s pack and came up with a leather cylinder sealed with wax. It had been stored in a spare oilskin to prevent moisture from finding the contents. He gave it a shake and grinned as he heard the hollow thump of parchment banging around the interior.

A messenger’s tube. Maybe he’d gotten lucky after all. He’d wait until he was alone before opening it, but perhaps this was what he needed to find the source of Brot’s lyrium.

Reth waited on the edge of the camp while he worked, taking in the scene without any visible emotion. He considered her as he overturned the contents of Marta’s pack onto the snow. “You should grab one of those bedrolls.”

She looked at him curiously and Bull pointed at Grennar’s deserted bedroll. He guessed that the animal skin back in the clearing had belonged to her, and if she planned to survive for very long out here, she would need a ground cloth at the very least. The cold was bad at the best of times, and during the night, it was outright deadly.

Reth shot a look at a nearby bundle of furs before jerking her thumb back toward the clearing. _“Thes eveolus ares lletha?”_

He could guess at her meaning. “It belonged to Grennar, sure.”

The elf turned her nose up. _“Unth”_

“You’ll be cold.” Bull mimed a shiver. “And I won’t be giving you my bedroll when it starts to snow.”

_”Unth.”_

Shrugging, Bull went through Marta’s pack and found nothing besides dirty clothes and a mirror that he used to clean the blood off his face with handfuls of snow. It was very unpleasant, but then, so was dried blood caked onto the skin.

He understood her reluctance. Were he in Reth’s position, he might also refuse the bedroll. Hell, if someone forced him down and tried to fuck him, Bull imagined he’d be more than willing to burn anything they’d even touched.

That still did not make it practical.

Finished with his looting, he stuffed the few useful items into his pack and tied his own bedroll, made of wonderfully luxurious bearskin no less, on top of the bulging sack. After slinging it over his shoulders, he took a moment to adjust the straps properly and then looked over at Reth.

She straightened up. The expectant expression on her face clearly reading: “lead on”.

Which was all well and good, except for the minor fact that Bull didn’t have the faintest idea where he was supposed to be going. He floundered for brief moment, unwilling to betray his ignorance, but then a sudden inspiration struck and he resigned himself to being embarrassed. It seemed like a weak hope, he figured he had to try.

Bull plucked a twig from the edge of the fire and motioned to Reth. “Hey, come here.”

She eyed the stick warily, but was persuaded to edge closer after further beckoning. Once he had her attention, Bull found a patch of unbroken snow and, using his stick, drew a house in the fine powder.

As these things went, Bull decided he’d done a serviceable job. The house had a roof, a little chimney, and even a front door. It was unlikely the sketch would ever make an appearance in an Orlesian art gallery, but if one had ever seen a building before, they would recognize his intent.

He tapped the finished drawing with his stick. “House.”

Reth peered at it, then up at him. She pointed to the sketch. “House?”

“House.”

Reth nodded. “House.”

Bull raised a finger and then took up the stick again. Over the next minute, he drew five more houses around the one he’d already drawn. Stepping back a little, he tapped the first house. “House.”

“House.”

Bull drew a circle around all six of the drawings, and then waved the stick at it. “City.”

“Si-tea?”

“City.”

Reth narrowed her eyes at the snow doodles, seemed to consider his words, and then nodded. “City.”

“Okay, good.” Bull indicated his snow city before throwing up his hands in an exaggerated expression of bafflement. He turned in place, making every effort to look as confused and lost as possible. “City?”

Reth blinked at him and Bull completed the entire pantomime again, stressing the word “city’” as he did.

Halfway through the encore, she sucked in a sharp breath and began nodding vigorously. Lifting a finger, she pointed at herself. “City?”

Bull groaned and jerked his stick at the drawing once more. “No, you aren’t the city, the city is---“

 _“Unth”_ Reth cut him off abruptly, an irritable edge entering her voice. She chopped her hand through the air and then stabbed her fingers at the drawing. “City.”

Cautiously, Bull nodded. “Yeah, city.”

“ _Ivent_ , city?” She thumbed a fist against her chest and then raised both hands to tug at her pointed ears. Then she pointed at him and lifted her hands over her head, moving them in such a way as to indicate large horns. “City?”

Bull chuckled in surprise. He took his stick and drew three stick figures in the snow. He gave one a crude approximation of elf ears, the second a pair of qunari horns, and the third he left unadorned.  
He tapped the first and gestured at Reth. “Elf.”

“Elvhen.” She confirmed.

Bull tapped the second and pointed at his own horns. “Qunari.”

“Qu-nar-i.”

He nodded and tapped the final picture. “Human.”

“Ooman?” Her brows drew together and then rose up. “Shemlen?”

Bull leapt on the word. He’d heard elves refer to humans with a similar slur. “Yes! Shem!”

Reth laughed, a soft, chuffing sound. “Shem.”

“Okay, you watching?” Bull held up a hand until her eyes focused on him. Slowly, he tapped the city before moving over to tap the human drawing. “Shem City?”

The elf smiled in a brilliant display of white teeth. She walked toward the middle of the camp and sought out a bare patch of sky between the treetops. She scanned it briefly, judging the brief glimmer of sunlight and comparing it to their surroundings, then she pointed to the northeast.

_“Alact.”_

Relief flooded Bull. Ever since the blizzard and his crew had lost track of the road, he’d been hopelessly lost. He didn’t know this country, and the Ben-Hassrath reports had barely mentioned any nearby cities except in cursory detail. 

She might not be leading him where he needed to go, of course, but at this point, Bull would take any civilization over this endless maze of trees and snow.

He walked up behind Reth and clapped a hand on her shoulder. The elf jolted and slid out from under his grip with a panicked wriggle. She darted away from him, remarkably light-footed in spite of the snow, to stand in a low fighter's crouch a few feet away.

Bull backed off, empty hands displayed to show he’d meant no harm. He couldn’t keep from smiling though, pleased as he was to have even this small glimmer of hope. Reth eyed him for a while before finally returning the smile with a hesitant one of her own.

“Alright,” Bull lowered his hands. “Let’s get going, eh?”

They spent the first two hours of their hike in relative silence.

The language barrier made light conversation unfeasible, and though Bull usually liked to pass a long journey with jokes and idle talk, he wasn’t interested in the five minute puppet show that would be required to ask Reth her favorite color.

Instead, the two of them marched onwards without so much as a word. Reth initially preferred to walk behind Bull, which was discomforting, but given that he weighed at least three times what she did and had recently murdered four people, he supposed the precaution was not unreasonable.

The distance did fade over time. Little by little, Reth grew accustomed to the situation and started to walk alongside him.

Bull accepted the change without comment. Whenever she wasn’t looking, he took the opportunity to study her,

Even by the standards of the Daelish, she was a wild-looking thing. The dark-gray strands of her hair had been pulled back and bound in an assortment of loose braids that tumbled around her shoulders in a disheveled array. Beads of colored ceramic had been threaded onto several locks, but tied in such a way that they did not clink together as she moved. 

The lines of her face were all angular. Her sharp cheekbones and triangular jawline lent her a lean severity that complimented her slightly feral appearance. Lines of faint tattoos swirled around the outskirts of her face, sweeping g up along her jaw and ending just above her temples. They were like a set of intertwined vines creeping up a trestle, and though the ink was only a few shades darker than her skin tone, the remarkably precise lines were clearly visible when the sun caught them just right.

She was not pretty, nothing half so delicate, but the harsh edges did nothing to disguise the attractive features underneath. Bull looked at her and liked what he saw. It was an idle observation, completely irrelevant given the circumstances, but he noticed and saw no point in deluding himself into thinking otherwise.

And, it wasn’t the only thing he observed. Bull made a career of studying people. She was doing an admirable job of maintaining composure, but the subtle cues were telling their own story.

Bull could read it in her hunched posture, the furtive way she kept glancing over her shoulder as if expecting them to be followed. She was favoring her left side, and given the way she kept sucking in the occasional short breath, he guessed she’d take a bad hit to the ribs and was trying her best to hide it; disguising the injury from him in the same way wounded prey avoided broadcasting their vulnerability.

One didn't need Ben-Hassrath training to see that the assault back in the clearing had left a few, less visible wounds. He might have been there to stop it from getting worse, but she’d been held down, stripped, and made to feel helpless. It was no easy thing to have one’s sense of self-control shaken so violently and the emotional toll was difficult to predict. 

Bull knew that from unwelcome experience. He’d worked alongside enough men and women who’d been through the same. Time usually healed, talking sometimes helped, but as with all things, there was no equation that solved everyone’s problems.

The most he could offer her was a distraction, and since conversation was pointless, he did the next best thing.

Whistling to get her attention, Bull pointed at one of the tall conifers that loomed overhead. “Tree.”

Reth looked at him.

“Tree.” Bull repeated firmly, rapping his knuckled against the trunk of a nearby pine as they passed by. “Tree.”

“Tree…” Reth drew the word out, following his motions with a sudden intensity. She looked back at the tree he’d touched, then pointed at one further ahead. “Tree?”

“Yeah, tree.”

 _“Sella.”_ She waved toward the same tree and then at herself. “ _Sella_ , elvhen.”

“Sella, tree?”

She nodded. _“Ivent.”_

“Alright,” Bull scanned their surroundings and found a bolder. He indicated it. “Stone.”

“Stone?”

“Yeah, stone.”

Something changed in Reth’s face. With the crashing suddenness of a breaking wave, her fierce demeanor cracked and excitement exploded across her features. She took a finger and pointed it at the axe sheathed at her side. _“Queth aes tull?”_

“Axe.” Bull touched his own weapon for her benefit. “Axe.”

So they went, playing a child’s game as they traded words and pointed out different aspects of themselves and their surroundings. Given the time of year, there was a distinct shortage of subject material, so it was not long before they got to…

“…Stupid cold shit.” Bull plucked up a handful of snow to demonstrate what he meant.

Reth’s brow wrinkled as she sounded out the words. “Stoo-pid old she-t?”

Bull chuckled. He was definitely going to have fun with this.

~o0o~

They made camp well before dark. Bull found himself tiring much sooner than he should have, and recognizing that the day had not been easy on his adopted companion, he decided they’d gone far enough.

They found a relatively secluded area in the shelter of a hillock. Bull used some branches to begin constructing a lean-to against the stone face of the cliff and then set about clearing the ground beneath it of snow.

To her credit, Reth did not sit idle. She left the camp shortly after arriving and returned thirty minutes later with an armful of wood that was mostly dry. While Bull built a shelter, she cleared and set up a fire pit with the sure motions of someone used to the task. 

Soon after, the two of them were warming their hands over a small fire as the day’s light began to ebb from the world.

Bull intended to keep his own food to himself, really, he did. There was no sense compromising both his life and his assignment for someone he’d just met. He figured that she couldn’t even really blame him in any case. After all, Reth had been the one to insist on coming with him, not the other way around.

Which, with that in mind, was why it proved so frustrating that he ended up putting enough of his precious beef in the cooking pot to feed the both of them.

He was no chef, and so his efforts didn’t get amount too much beyond melting snow in the pot and then putting the beef in to stew. He figured that would make the dry meat more digestible and he supposed they could drink the meat water afterwards. It would keep them alive at the very least.

It took him a while to become aware that Reth was observing his efforts with an expression of abject distress. As he settled down on a nearby rock to watch the pot boil, she opened her pack and drew out a small wooden box and a canvas sack. Lifting the lid of the box, she peered at the contents before making an ominous move toward his cooking pot.

“Hey!” Bull rose from his seat and raised a hand to stop her. “Slow down, what’s all this?”

Reth turned the box so that he could see for himself. The interior had been divided into small wooden compartments, each containing a different sort of dried herb. They were fragrant to the point of being offensive, pungent aromas blending together in a way that scorched his nostrils.

“Nope.” He shook his head emphatically and made as if the shove the box away. “Thanks for the offer, but we don’t have much food. I don’t need you ruining it with some weird elven stuff.”

Reth’s eyebrows wrinkled together and she tried to step around him. _“Methi pune tetis. Leventha cun.”_

Bull shifted to intercept her. “Look, I’m not—”

Without even glancing up, Reth lifted a hand and swatted him on the nose.

It was an openhanded blow, more of a chiding tap with her fingertips than anything else, but it stopped Bull cold.

He gaped at her in stunned disbelief. In the meantime, Reth used the distraction to slip around him with a deft little maneuver and promptly began tossing pinches of the different spices into his meat water.

“Seriously?” Bull rubbed at his nose as he glowered down at her. “You realize I could tug your head off of your shoulders, right?”

 _“Sheala tin salu ett. Qulus vene effert lunous ver la’llevetun.”_ Reth's tone was not at all apologetic as she took some sort of dirty root from her sack and began skinning it with economic flicks of her knife. _“Tev’el quin unth fiel.”_

Bull treated her to a long glare before sinking back down onto the rock with a grumpy snort. He watched sourly as she cut up her mystery vegetables and added them to the pot. Practically speaking, he knew that any food was probably good food, but damn it, he hated vegetables and what if he couldn’t even eat them? So far as he knew, he was able to eat anything that an elf or a human could, but now would be a spectacularly bad time to learn otherwise. 

Besides, she’d whacked him. Bull had a solid foot-and-a-half on her and the crazy elf had smacked him like he was a disobedient pup. It was just insulting.

The increasingly appetizing aroma from the cook pot only made him more determined to be unhappy. Reth, having finished tinkering with his rations, settled back onto her heels and adopted an air of haughty disdain as though Bull had been the one to give offense. 

He frowned at her and she frowned right back. The cheery campfire atmosphere was wearing thin.

Time passed in this angry silence while the stew bubbled and thickened. Finally, Reth dug a wooden bowl out her pack and used it to ladle up a portion of the mixture. Keeping it for herself, she looked at Bull and held out a hand.

He set his jaw but was able to hand her his own bowl without flashing any unpleasant gestures. The Iron Bull was firmly above holding petty grudges, and even if he was still pissed off, he was also literally starving.

She filled it and handed it back to him. Bull took it and inspected it critically. He wanted to find some obvious fault in the stew, any indication would do, but as a whole, it seemed entirely innocuous. Taking up a spoonful, he blew on it and put it in his mouth.

…Damn, but it tasted good.

Not great, that was pretty much impossible given that the chief ingredient was salted beef, but it was good. The vegetables were not entirely offensive, and whatever spices she’d used were making the tough meat taste better.

It was the most palatable thing that Bull had eaten since joining up with Brot’s crew, and even his lingering resentment couldn’t blind him to it. 

He could feel Reth’s eyes on him. Accepting his fate, he sighed and looked up. “It’s good, alright?”

She quirked a brow.

Gripping his spoon much more tightly than was necessary, Bull mentally counted down from ten before giving her an exaggerated smile as he pointed at the stew. “Good!”

Reth smirked. _“Hen vehas cun.”_

“Yeah, yeah, don’t be a shit about it.”

They ate the entire pot between them. Reth consumed her share with the same measured dignity a noble might display at the Divine’s table, while Bull devoured his without much regard for chewing  
.  
It was gone too quickly. His stomach was still demanding more by the time he’d finished scraping up his second portion. Reth finished more slowly, and it was an effort on his part not to reach for what was left in the cook pot. She’d contributed her fair share to the meal and anyone that scrawny probably needed all she could get.

As a peace offering, Bull gathered up all of the dishes and took them away from camp in order to clean them. By the time he returned, Reth was already beneath the lean-to, huddled into a little ball beneath her cloak.

Bull was too tired to think about much. He laid out his own bedroll next to her and clambered inside. The warm furs felt like paradise and his eyes started to close on their own accord. Next to him, he could hear Reth muttering something in elf-y gibberish, but he didn’t bother to listen.

As sleep began to draw him downwards, Bull’s last conscience thought was that he truly hoped that Reth wouldn’t stab him to death while he slept.

Yeah, an utter lack of stabbing would be lovely.

~o0o~

He woke up to find that it had snowed overnight.

The shelter had kept the worst of it off of him, but his furs were still covered with flecks of white powder as he blearily rose to greet the new day.

Reth was already awake and crouched beside a small fire. If her puffy eyes and wan complexion were to be any indication, she’d gone through a sleepless night. Bull wrestled himself free of his bedroll and then rolled his arms in a long stretch. Ambling over toward Reth, he sank down beside the fire as he waited for his sleep-fogged mind to clear.

The elf was using a long stick to stir at something in the coals. He leaned forward, saw what looked to be two misshapen rocks amid the fire and snorted a laugh. “What the hell are you doing?”

Reth flicked a glance at him. _“Cuen tetas.”_

“Naturally.”

Using her stick, she flicked the two stones out of the fire and into the surrounding snow, where they immediately began to hiss and pop in the slush. She let them lie for a few seconds before scooping one up and tossing it toward Bull without warning.

He caught it out of reflex and immediately began juggling the hot item between his hands. “What the--?”

Reth took up the remaining stone and held it easily in her gloved hand. Taking out her stone knife, she sliced along one side and the rough surface parted as if it were warm butter.

She split the “stone” open, revealing a soft, yellowish center that steamed in the cold air. Bull studied his own rock long enough to determine it was another one of her blasted vegetables. He gave it a dubious appraisal once it had cooled to the point where he could hold it comfortably, then lifted it to his mouth to nibble at the corner.

_“Unth!”_

He looked up to find Reth was treating him to the same distressed expression she’d used when he tried cooking last night. Holding up her own vegetable, she mimed a cutting motion along its side, then offered him a pointed look. _“Evelad cuethis tun.”_

Bull looked at her, then down at the vegetable. He’d had just about enough of her telling him how to eat his food. Looking her straight in the eye, he lifted the vegetable and took a hearty bite out of the end.

He burned his tongue. Badly.

He worked to keep his expression blank as he stubbornly chewed the molten vegetable. Reth scoffed and shook her head in disgust before turning away. Stalking over to her pack, the elf dug out her spice box to sprinkle some herbs over her own vegetable. Then, she began to delicately spoon up bites of food using the point of her knife.

Bull ate what remained of his with more caution. The damn thing wasn’t half bad. A little like bread on the inside, and the skin of it had acquired a pleasantly smoky flavor from the fire. He’d had potatoes before and this thing seemed close enough.

They broke camp once finished. The feeling of a warm breakfast in his belly put Bull in a good mood, so much so that he didn’t even mind playing another game of “what’s this called?” with his companion. They were quickly running out of things to identify, but that was just making Reth more creative.

It was also making her slightly annoying. Bull had meant the exercise as a way to get her mind off more troubling matters, but as they walked, it became clear that Reth was approaching the subject with a great deal of enthusiasm. She seemed to be genuinely interested in learning the Fereldan language, and despite himself, he admitted to being impressed by her progress. It wasn't as though she immediately began to speak in complete sentences or anything, but even so, Reth was picking the language up more quickly than Bull had ever managed when learning a new tongue. She deduced a startling amount through context and it took him by surprise the first time she responded in the affirmative with “Alright.”

Bull made a half-hearted attempt at learning hers in turn, but whereas Fereldan, Orlsian, and Antivan all shared a common ancestor with the Tevinter language, her Daelish was entirely new to him. Each sentence felt like reciting poetry through a mouthful of marbles. Reth was patient though, never laughing at his fumbling attempts and always making a concentration effort to help him with the pronunciation. It didn't seem to be doing much good, in spite of her best efforts. 

They hiked up until well in the afternoon, falling silent as both ran out of things to identify. It might have continued in that vein until nightfall, but then Bull saw the deer.

He clamped a hand down onto Reth’s shoulder to keep her still. Before the elf could give them away, he held a finger up to his lips and mouthed a silent: “Shhhh.”

The signal must be universal because she froze in place. Moving slowly, he removed his hand from Reth’s shoulder and directed her attention over to their left.

The deer was a small buck, thin boned and scrawny as a result of the late season. It stood some twenty yards away, scrambling at the base of a tree stump as it dug into the packed snow in an effort to reach the plants underneath.

Bull kept his motions steady as he reached back to unsling Ben’s old bow. He could feel Reth’s eyes on him, so Bull gave her a quick, quelling gesture as he loosened the weapon and then pulled out the bowstring to go along with it.

The buck never even noticed them. They were downwind and he was so intent on his task that Bull was able to restring the bow and lift it up without drawing notice. Nocking an arrow, Bull drew the bow back in a single, careful movement.

Bull sighted down the shaft of the arrow as he leveled the weapon. He breathed in and out, composing his body in the manner he'd been taught while mentally reviewing each of his lessons. So what if he'd never been the absolute best with a bow? This wasn't a hard shot. He'd managed much more difficult archery a hundred times in the past. No problem at all. 

The deer lifted its head and looked at them. Bull aimed toward its chest, held his breath on the inhale, and then relaxed his grip on the string.

His bow thrummed as the arrow hissed forward. It whipped through the air, bending lightly with the force of release, and proceeded to sail over the deer’s head by a solid foot.

The buck bolted, vanishing into the forest in a few quick hops.

Behind him, someone stifled a laugh.

Bull’s jaw locked and the bow creaked as his fingers tightened around the polished wood. Reminding himself that he was above murdering tiny elves, even the truly annoying ones, Bull turned his head to glare at Reth.

She was doing a notably poor job of concealing her smile. As he was unable to find any humor in the situation, Bull growled at her. “What, like you could do better?”

He’d meant it as a rhetorical question, which was a near pointless endeavor given the depths of their usual conversation, but Reth must have picked up on the challenge as she immediately arched a delicate brow and gave up trying to disguise her smile. 

_“Quen irele cun trile ven.”_ The elf slung her own bow of her back and planted it on top of her boot before putting the string to it. Hefting the weapon in one hand, she adjusted her quiver before abruptly tossing her pack at Bull’s chest. _“Feath.”_

He caught it. “What are you--?”

Reth took off in the direction the deer had fled. She moved lightly over the snow, her boots barely seeming to break the surface of the white powder as she bounded after the animal.

“Wait!” Bull shouted as Reth rapidly disappeared into the trees. “What the hell do you think your doing? You’ll never catch that deer!”

She either didn’t hear, didn't catch his meaning, or else simply chose to ignore him.

Bull waited for a few long moments, debating the appropriate response in this kind of situation, then decided there wasn’t an easy precedent to draw upon. Shouldering Reth’s pack with a grunt, he started off in the direction they’d been following originally.

Damn fool elf would probably get herself all turned about. Even supposing she managed to bag that deer, how were the two of them supposed to meet up afterwards?

Craziness. He didn’t need this shit.

Bull told himself that there was no point in worrying. If the elf got herself lost, then it was her own damn fault for running off. That deer would lead her on a merry chase and then where would she be? Hell, when it came down to it, he wasn’t her keeper and their uneasy alliance didn’t mean much in the scheme of things. 

He kept saying that even as he decided to stop a few hours earlier than he would have ordinarily chose. It wasn’t because of Reth, that would have been stupid, but rather because he’d found the perfect shelter for the evening.

The cave was a small one, formed by the meeting of two rocky outcroppings. It was just deep enough to block the cold wind and the stone shelves overhead left a narrow gap for smoke to pass through from a campfire. A person couldn’t ask for more and Bull took the time to clear the cave floor of its small accumulation of snow before setting about building a fire. It took him a few tries, but he finally got a sullen blaze flickering.

After adding a few more logs, he sat back with a satisfied groan. The heat from the fire was reflecting off the cave walls and it wouldn’t be long before the interior became almost comfortable. The only thing left was to make his dinner.

Bull glanced at Reth’s pack. She’d pulled a good amount of food from it already, so it stood to reason that there was probably more. She had given him the pack, and Bull was very hungry, and there wasn’t anything to prevent him from tearing it open and eating whatever seemed edible. 

He didn’t though. Nor did he open his own pack and started preparing the few things that remained from his supplies. Bull sat quietly by the fire, ignoring the more practical stirrings in his mind.

It was just after nightfall when Reth finally caught up with him. She materialized from the darkness with the barest hint of sound and entered the cave just far enough to heave a heavy burden down beside the fire. _“Illevente,_ Bull.”

He jumped, caught off guard and half-asleep, but any irritation he might have felt at the fright vanished when he caught sight of what she’d brought to the fire.

The deer was dead. As he had seen earlier, it was not a particular robust specimen, but that couldn’t be helped. A narrow puncture along its ribs bore a dark crust of dried blood and he could see the edge of a larger wound from where Reth had driven her knife into the dying animal’s heart.

He stared at the carcass in dumbfounded silence before lifting his gaze up to the Reth’s shadowed features. “I could honestly kiss you right now.”

She moved into the light in a way that allowed him to see the cocky grin on her face. Crossing over to the other side of the fire, she plopped down with a soft grown. _“Cal vaen leveleth ett.”_

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Bull eyed her for a moment before rising to heave the carcass onto his own shoulder. Now that he got a better look at her, Reth was worn out. Running down the deer must have taken all of her reserves. 

No matter, Bull hardly minded doing the dirty work. Motioning for her to sit back down when she started to rise, Bull braced himself against the waiting cold before ducking out of the cave.

He took the carcass well away from their camp to begin cleaning it. He was no butcher, but this was not the first time he’d taken a knife to a kill. He separated the cuts as evenly as he was able, wrapping the choicer meat in a spare oilcloth from his pack.

Bull took everything he deemed reasonable. Storing the oilcloth in a tree tonight would keep it free from anything looking for an easy meal, but there more here than they could easily carry once they set off again in the morning. 

Leaving the offal and what remained of the carcass for scavengers, Bull carried the rest to camp to find Reth dozing against their packs. 

He slowed and made an effort to walk noisily. She woke before he’d even reached the firelight, one hand flying to her axe’s handle before she recognized him. Relaxing, the elf nodded in greeting before slumping back into her previous position.

Bull settled down the fire and grinned when he saw that she’d lashed a crude roasting spit together in his absence. Whistling a quiet tune under his breath, Bull took an entire haunch of deer meat and fitted it to the spit. Soon after, drips of fat were sizzling as they fell amid the coals and the mouthwatering aroma of cooking meat filled their small cave.

He tended to the meal with cheerful anticipation. If it was later in the winter, he’d worry about bears being attracted to the smell of meat, but around this time, a few wolves were all they’d have to be concerned with. Given the decent fire and the inherent shyness that wolves typically displayed, Bull imagined it wasn’t a pressing worry.

By the time he judged the meat done, he was all but drooling. With a gentlemanly wave, he offered Reth first go at the steaming meal.

She rose to cut a hunk off of the deer leg and caught it in her bowl. Bull took a portion that was easily three times as large as hers and settled back onto his haunches with a gusty sigh of delight.

It was heaven.

He barely gave the meat time to cool as he shoveled it in his mouth. The meat was unsalted and Reth had not even bothered with her herbs, but it was still the most delicious thing he’d ever eaten.

Even Reth seemed to forget her previous decorum as she tore into the venison with obvious enjoyment, They were both feeling the efforts of hard travel, and now that they had food in abundance, they did what any hungry animal would do in times of plenty: gorge their ever-loving asses off.

Between them, they picked the deer leg clean. Bull ate far more than she did, but in a proportional sense, it probably balanced out.

He cleaned up their mess as he had the night before. He was happy to do it. The simple joy of having a belly full of warm food was lifting his spirits to the point of giddiness.

After disposing of the rubbish, Bull built the fire up and then spread out his bearskin bedroll on one side of the cave. Earlier, he’d taken the time to collect relatively dry pine needles, and along with the leather ground cloth from his pack, they served to provide a reasonable layer of padding against the hard stone. 

Bull had slept under far worse circumstances and the warm furs of his bedroll proved to be perfectly inviting as he lay down and pulled them over his shoulders. His pack made a serviceable pillow and the radiant warmth from the fire was already lulling him into a doze. 

Across from him, on the other side of the fire, Reth seemed less comfortable. The elf was huddled against the cave wall, knees drawn up to her chest and her cloak drawn tight around her so that she formed a compact ball. The fire couldn’t fully chase the freezing chill from the cave, and Bull felt a pang of sympathy when he heard her blow out a shivering breath.

No, that’s what she got for refusing to take one of the spare bedrolls. Bull had tried to warn her that this exact thing would happen, but no, she’d been stubborn and now she was cold and miserable. It served her right and there was no reason Bull should feel bad because of it.

He mulled that thought over and heaved a sigh. Hell, he wasn’t even convincing himself.

“Hey.”

Reth looked up at him. She appeared almost gaunt in the firelight, her features drawn tight from exhaustion. Another day without sleep and the elf wouldn’t be able to keep up with his pace.

That was the only reason behind his decision to lift open the top corner of his bedroll and motion toward her. “Come on, before you freeze solid.”

Reth went still, staring at him with a raptor’s intensity. The sleepiness had vanished from her expression and now she just looked vaguely hostile. He was momentarily confused by the reaction, and then it occurred to him what the gesture might have looked like without context.

“No, not like that.” Bull growled in frustration. This language guessing game was wearing very thin. Sitting up, he jabbed a finger at her, then mimed shivering. “You. Cold. Bedroll. Warm.”

The efl remained stone-faced and silent as she regarded him. Too tired to try to explain his intentions further, Bull flopped back into his furs and waved a negligent hand at her. If that’s the way she wanted things, he wasn’t going to press. He closed his eye and began to drift off.

A shuffling sound caused him to open his eyelid in time to see Reth rise to her feet. She moved stiffly, as though it hurt to do so, but she moved around the fire and approached his bedroll. When she was standing over him, the elf shuffled her feet awkwardly, clearly asking if the offer was still open.

Bull lifted the fur blanket. “Yeah, get in.”

She started to lie down, but he stopped her by rapping a knuckle against her left boot. “Shoes off. I’m not going to have you getting my bedroll all muddy.”  
Reth considered this briefly, glancing once at his discarded boots before setting about removing her own shoes. Taking off her cloak as well, she folded it neatly before bending down to slide in next to him.

Cue the awkwardness. 

Reth lay facing away from him in the suddenly too-small bedroll, her body held tense and so perfectly still that Bull could barely tell if she was breathing. There simply wasn’t a lot of space between them, and though Bull shifted as best he could to minimize contact, it was entirely in vain.

He was just beginning to regret his offer when Reth surprised him.

She released a breathy sigh of relief, the shuddering sound of someone warming their frigid hands against a fire, and then, quite abruptly, pressed back against him as she sought after his body heat.

Bull grimaced in discomfort, but held his tongue as the bare skin of his chest came in contact with cold elf. He let her get situated, and after bundling her folded cloak beneath her head, Reth finally settled down.

They lay quietly, the only sounds their breathing and the steady crackle of the fire. Reth stirred, and he felt one of her hands lightly pat him on his hip. “ _Velluth maen_ , Bull.”

He smirked, shut his eye and allowed himself to relax in turn. “You’re welcome. Or, good night. Whichever that was.”

She murmured something unintelligible and then went quiet. Bull heard her breaths go even and realized that she was already asleep. It seemed as though the elf had been even more tired than Bull had assumed.

He didn’t follow suit quite so quickly. Bull found himself noticing the soft press of the body next to his. He’d have thought Reth would be all elbows and sharp angles, but the reality was very different. This close, she smelled of leather, woodsmoke, and the earthy tones of a forest. Beneath that, there was something sweeter and indescribably feminine. 

It was not his fault that his thoughts decided to start drifting in that direction. After all, it had been a few months since he’d last lain with anyone and his body was just reacting to the proximity. These things were natural. Better to forget about it and get some sleep.

Right, easier said than done. 

To be fair, Bull tried for a little while, but his posture too stiff. His right arm was squashed between him and Reth, and his left was held tightly against his side to avoid touching her. It was damned uncomfortable, and after a few long minutes of discomfort, he gave up and wrapped his arm around Reth’s middle. If she decided to kill him for it, she could do it in the morning after they both had some sleep.

For now though, the elf just wiggled closer and mewled sleepily. She, at least, seemed to be perfectly fine with the situation.

~o0o~


	3. Pursuit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ~o0o~

He awoke to the pale half-light of dawn.

Reth was asleep beside him. At some point, she’d shifted about in the bedroll so that she now faced him. He could vaguely remember being jostled awake at some point in the night, which helped to explain why their legs were tangled together and Bull’s arm was slung about her waist in a loose grip.

He blinked down at the top of Reth's head in groggy incomprehension until the pieces fell into place and he remembered why a fully-clothed elf was clinging to him. They were sharing a bed because she'd been cold and he'd felt guilty. That was a fairly boring reason. He made a mental note to add a few embellishments if he ever told this story to the Chargers. Nothing major, just a few gallant gestures on his part, and a lengthy scene of desperate, mind-blowing sex included purely to keep up appearances.

Bull closed his eye and let his head fall back down to rest on his pack. Were he the gentlemanly sort, he would probably be obligated to try and extricate himself from their compromising position. Given that it was cold enough outside to freeze his fruits solid, Bull found it decidedly fortunate that he was more of the “manfully-roguish” type. Staying right where he was sounded like a grand idea in his opinion. 

So, he dozed, enjoying the warmth and pleasant contact. Pretty soon, they’d be up and hiking through the snow. This was a nice way to procrastinate.

Reth woke up some time later with a long intake of breath. Bull kept his eye closed, pretending that he was asleep. It seemed better that way. Reth could figure out how she wanted to handle this, and so long as Bull didn’t “awaken”, they could avoid any uncomfortable moments. 

The elf yawned softly and shifted about before pausing. She mumbled something in a bare whisper, then untangled herself with a few deft movements that Bull might have actually slept through if he’d truly been out.

There was a brief blast of cold air as she slipped out of the bedroll, and then, to his surprise, Bull felt her lift the top blanket and tuck it to cover his exposed shoulder. She then moved away, the soft padding of her footsteps loud in the pristine quiet of their surroundings. Bull cracked his eye to stare after her. She was a curious sort, no doubt about that.

He kept up his sleeping ruse for several more minutes before sitting up and launching into a theatrical yawn. He rolled his neck to produce a satisfying series of pops before getting out of his bedroll at last.

Reth was rekindling the coals of their fire. She greeted him a smile that was friendlier then any she’d offered him before. It made sense that she would. There was a degree of trust in the act of sleeping with someone, a willingness to be vulnerable in the presence of another. Some experiences just created ties and changed the nature of things, which was a big part of the reason Bull avoiding spending the night with those he brought to bed.

Still, if he was going to be traveling with an elf he could barely speak to, Bull preferred her pleasant to prickly. Offering a smile of his own, Bull watched her work for a moment before noticing that they were nearly out of firewood.

Through gestures and a few words he thought she’d recognize, Bull conveyed that he was going out to look for more. He spent a good fifteen minutes searching for wood that was dry, and, finding nothing close to sort, settled for some that was merely damp.

Reth had gotten a sullen little blaze going by the time he returned. The wood hissed and smoked terribly as it burned, to the point where Bull was concerned it might not catch. Thankfully though, the fire grew hot enough and they managed a respectable fire after several aborted attempts.

While Reth made them some kind of deer stew, Bull took the opportunity to do a little grooming. He had four weeks worth of beard on his face by this point, and even if it kept his face warm, his pride kept him firmly against the idea of appearing entirely unkempt. There was a world of difference between a manfully-roguish beard and the wild growth of a complete lunatic.

Fishing Marta’s mirror and the razor out of his pack, Bull studied his reflection critically. He was definitely erring on the side of lunatic. Trimming it was out of the question. That required a better circumstances and more motivation. Everything was going to have to go. 

He emptied ice-cold water from his canteen into his meal bowl and added a thin sliver of soap to create lather. Grimacing as he slapped the frigid mixture over his skin, Bull wet his razor and then set to with measure care.

He’d just finished scraping the left side of his face clear when he became aware of an intense degree of scrutiny.

Looking away from the mirror, Bull glanced to the side and saw Reth staring back at him with wide-eyed interest`. She’d completely stopped stirring the stew pot, instead preferring to grant him her full attention.

Bull blinked. “What?”

A fierce blush exploded over Reth’s cheeks and she looked down immediately. She said something in her own tongue and then began tending to the stew pot as though it was the most fascinating bit of cookware in existence. 

“C’mon.” Bull lowered his razor and turned to face her. The blush was oddly fetching and now he was interested. “What, never seen a guy shave before? Sometimes I like to look pretty.”

Reth darted a look back up at him, and seeing his grin, visibly relaxed. She straightened in her seat, looked down at the razor in his hand, then smiled shyly. _“Evea feruth tine?”_

Bull glanced down at the razor, now more curious than amused. “You want to see this?”

Reth reached out a hand, but not toward the razor. She moved it toward his face with hesitant slowness, stopping short of actually touching him.

This was certainly weird and Bull was mostly curious as to what she planned to do. Setting the razor aside, he waved her toward his face. “Alright, go ahead.”

Reth gauged his expression for a moment and then used her teeth to tug her right glove free. Reaching out, she touched the side of his unshaven jaw, running her fingertips along the spiky growth of his bread in an exploratory stroke. She laughed softly, moving her hand to touch the shaven of his face for comparison.

Bull watched her face as he submitted to the examination. She seemed genuinely interested in this remarkably uninteresting part of daily life. So interested, in fact, it was almost seemed as though…

“…You’ve never seen anyone shave before.” Bull murmured softly. The sudden realization was absurd and yet, felt like the truth. “And just how is that possible?”

Reth withdrew her hand and replaced her glove.. Offering him another shy grin, she turned back to the cookpot to attend to their breakfast.

Bull stared after her for a time before returning to finish his shave. Lifting the mirror, he took up his razor and began removing the remaining scruff.

She’d never seen someone shave their face. The idea grew increasingly significant the more thought he gave it. Elves might not grow facial hair like the other races, but to be totally ignorant of the concept? That was ridiculous.

The Daelish tribes liked to assert their independence and pretend that their nomadic lifestyle kept them separate from the human world. The truth was that even the haughtiest tribe found itself trading with a human or dwarven settlement a few dozen times each year. There were too many commodities that couldn’t be found in the forests. Elves wanted forged metals, glass, rare magical components, and though they would not readily admit to it, access to the wide variety of alcoholic drinks that humans and dwarves excelled at making.

No matter the degree, Daelish tribes were always connected to the larger world on some level. In point of fact, with their wide travels and constant relocation, they were probably the worldliest people in Thedas; far more so than most human settlements at any rate.

It made for an interesting puzzle. Reth spoke only elf-y gibberish and she clearly hadn’t spent much time around any race save her own. What to make of that?

He wondered if she was some kind of hermit. Or, if not that, maybe some kind of sheltered priestess who’d gotten waylaid from her tribe? Hell, for all Bull knew, she could be some sort of time-traveling elf mage who’d stumbled her way out of antiquity. 

It could happen. Throw a stone in any direction these days and it’d likely bounce off a dragon or some priggish twat capable of tossing fireballs from his fingertips. Time-traveling elves were damn near rational by comparison.

Bull finished his shave and then moved to join Reth by the fire, all the while wondering how hard it would be to ask her about it. 

Too hard, he eventually concluded. If he had the energy or a compelling reason he might press, but for now, he’d just accept that the elf was weird. As far as elves went, it was a comfortable conclusion.

Besides, there was breakfast.

~o0o~

They traveled in much the same fashion for the next three days. At first, they made relatively good progress considering the conditions, but as they moved further north toward the mountain range, the terrain became rough and their passage grew difficult.

Five days into their journey, Bull reached the firm conclusion that saving Reth had been the smartest decision of his life. The elf proved to be the most able companion he’d worked with in years. She was a master woodsman and while Bull's ego would have liked to think that he would have gotten by just fine on his own, the truth was that he would have likely died several times over if she hadn't been with him.

Reth could produce food where there was none. Her rations and the remainder of the deer got them through two more days of good eating, but after that, they’d been forced to conserve what they had left, supplementing it where they could with whatever Reth could scrounge from the frozen landscape.

She managed that admirably, often disappearing into the trees whenever they stopped only to return with handfuls of edible roots and collections of dark lichen that they boiled thoroughly before eating. None of it tasted nearly as good as their remaining meat, but it filled Bull’s stomach and kept him moving despite the rigors of the day.

At night, the two of them huddled in his bedroll, sharing body heat gratefully. There were no further issues of awkwardness or boundaries now. The nights were simply too cold and good shelter too infrequent. It was much more comfortable this way for both of them and Bull found that he didn't mind much in any case.

Conversation was still a bit lacking. After several anatomically graphic sketches in the snow, he’d managed to explain pronouns to her, and with the same uncanny ease that she’d displayed so far, Reth had picked up on them and begun to string together a few short sentences using the words they’d exchanged.

Sure, it was impressive, he wasn’t trying to deny that, but it hardly made for scintillating discourse. 

The trees began to thin as they drew closer and closer to the forest’s boundary, and by midmorning on the sixth day, they finally broke through the treeline with an abruptness that had taken Bull aback. After what felt likes weeks among the massive trees, the sudden absence of them was alien and discomforting.

They’d reached the Lower Steppes, a narrow band of grasslands that separated the forest from the Frostback mountain range. It almost uniformly flat here, a wide expanse of white snow that stretched between them and their destination like a great sandbar. The only thing that broke up the monotony was the Imperial Highroad, a dark river of stone flagstones that wove through the Steppes before curving up toward the Frostbacks.

To Bull, the highway was the finest sort of blessing. Snow did not accumulate here, a result of the magical wards that had been placed during its original construction. Time had eroded some of these ancient enchantments, leaving patches of ice and snow on the occasional stretch of roadway, but for the most part, the magic proved remarkably enduring. It was a quiet marvel, one which would never be found in qunari lands. The humans were more lenient in their treatment of mages, and if this road was any indication, far more creative in how they put them to use.

They made better time once they'd joined with the road. After a few hours of good travel, Bull stepped off it to relieve himself. 

If he were with the Chargers, he would have just let fly a few yards off the path, but because he did not know the customs or taboos of Reth’s people, he made the cautious choice and hiked over a small rise in search of privacy.

Whistling softly as he colored a patch of snow, Bull realized he was in a rather pleasant mood. The sun was out, and while the winter’s light was mostly harsh and glaring, it was still pleasantly warm on his shoulders. The going was a lot easier now that they weren’t forcing their way through snowdrifts, and at their new pace, they might even reach the mountain by nightfall.

He was just finishing up and refastening his trousers when a glint of sunlight winked across the corner of his vision. Hesitating, Bull lifted his head and scanned their surroundings. The forest they’d left behind was stretching off the south, a dark line of trees that had blurred into a solid mass from this distance. The highroad ran parallel to it, trailing back to the east and toward some of the—

There. Several miles back in the direction they’d come, another flash of light.

Bull shaded his eye with one hand and stared hard down the length of the highroad. He tried to convince himself that he was just being pessimistic, that there was no reason to assume that it was anything more than sunlight playing off the snow, and really, it was probably just his imagination tricking him into thinking that he could see a handful of indistinct blurs moving in the far distance.

He studied the horizon for a good thirty seconds before turning to look over his shoulder. 

Reth was down on the Highroad about twenty yards away, currently stooped over as she examined something near her feet. Pursing his lips, he whistled sharply. 

Her head snapped up at the sound. After a short wave from Bull, she trotted toward him until she was standing beside him on the berm. 

Bull lifted a hand to draw her attention westwards. “See that?”

It only took her a handful of seconds to notice what he had. Drawing in a sharp breath through her teeth, she turned to him. “ _Kint. Duro medra calvis lesten._ ”

“Eh?”

She lifted a hand with four fingers raised. “ _Kint._ ”

He nodded. “Four.”

“Foouuurrr…” Reth drew the word out, her brow furrowing as she considered her next explanation. After a moment, she shrugged. “ _Calvis._ ”

Bull shrugged right back. “Calvis?”

In response, Reth juggled her hands up and down in the air and made a 'clip-clop' sound with her tongue. Looking vaguely embarrassed, she lifted a brow. “ _Calvis_?”

“Uh…horse.” Bull scratched at his head then pointed west again. “Four horses? kint calvis?”

“ _Ivent._ ”

Bull frowned. Four riders? There weren’t many ways that could be taken for a good thing. This place was too remote for most travelers and given the current climate, few chose to brave the roads these days.

Bandits then, or perhaps soldiers. Either seemed equally likely and Bull would prefer to avoid an encounter with both. Hopefully, the riders were traveling at a sedate speed. If they were riding hard…

“C’mon.” Bull laid a hand on Reth’s shoulder and gave her a gentle tug back toward the Highroad. “We need to move.”

They continued at a far more hurried pace as the morning stretched to midday and from there, into early evening. The quicker march was made easier by the relative flatness of the road, but even so, Bull felt the strain of it. His body was down to its bare reserves and it was not long before he was breathing hard and sweating under the harsh sunlight.

Reth seemed better suited to the rigors. Where Bull was all heavy muscle, she had the sparse frame of an endurance runner. She never seemed to slow in her movements, and while clearly not immune to the hardship, there was something about the stubborn set of her face that suggested she could run all day if given cause.

The day wound down, hours slipped past, and with a grim inevitability, the riders drew closer.

It had seemed at first that the distance between them and their unknown pursuers was remaining constant. The blurs remained visible behind them throughout the morning, but it was not until early afternoon that they started growing distinct.

By now, there was only three miles or so separating them. Bull could look over his shoulder and make out the dark figures without any trouble. There was no way that the riders could have failed to notice them either.

“Bull. Look.”

“I see them.” Bull grunted without sparing a glance at Reth. He needed to save his breath and keep his concentration. 

_“Unth.”_ Reth swatted him on the shoulder and stabbed her finger toward the mountain. _“Atcha kil vertes, no viermete._ Bad.”

He looked. It didn’t take long to figure out what she was getting at. Clouds were cresting over the mountains. These were dark clouds, heavy with foreboding and preceded by the shifting haze of distant snowfall. 

They had a snowstorm to their front and riders at their back.

Bull groaned. “Ah, fuck.”

“ _Ketchat._ ” Reth evidently shared the sentiment if her sour tone was anything to go on. “ _Ith levo tin cueli_.”

They had little choice but to keep going. Getting caught out in the open during a blizzard would be dangerous, and though they were still a ways from the mountains, the landscape was changing. Bull could see trees up ahead as they neared the foothills. The chance at finding cover gave him extra energy he needed to keep up with Reth’s punishing pace. They could find maybe find shelter from the storm up ahead, and if the terrain was rough enough, possibly go somewhere the horsemen might not be inclined to follow. 

Ten minutes later, the riders increased their pace.

There was no doubt about it. One glance over his shoulder showed him that the distance between them had shrunk considerably.

Damn it all, when had they gotten so close? 

Reth snarled something under her breath. “Bull, trees!”

There was a small copse ahead of them and just off the road, maybe a half-mile or so from their current position. The trees were small and slender conifers with only the barest hint of needles still clinging to the branches. There was no chance of hiding from the riders at this point, but he guessed that wasn’t her intention.

It was a hell of a lot harder to ride someone down if you had to navigate through a bunch of trees. As defensible positions went, this was only a notch above being backed into a corner, but they were much worse off if they stayed out in the open.

“Right.” Bull managed to gasp through his labored breathing. “Go! Go!”

They broke into a run. It wasn’t much of a run in Bull’s case, but Reth stayed with him even though it was clear she could have gone faster. The steady clamor of hoof beats grew louder and louder, matched evenly by the heavy thumping of his pulse in his ears.

The trees got closer. Six hundred yards, then five, then three, then two…

Horses snorted, men shouted to each other, and just as Bull thought they might make it, a loud voice called out from close behind them. 

“Hold there! Hold or we will attack!”

Bull grabbed Reth’s arm and tugged her around. He spun in place, hands flying up to slide his axe from its fastenings. By the time he turned around fully, he had the heavy weapon cradled in his hands.

Four horses pulled up to a halt a dozen yards away, one of them screaming its irritation as the rider sawed at the reins. The massive animals shuffled, their chests heaving and their breath steaming the air in gouts. 

The riders were all human, four men in total. Each wore leather and mail armor of a uniform design, their open helms exposing a row of hard, pale faces well-weathered and chapped from exposure. All four had a sword sheathed at his horse’s saddle, and the two men on the right each carried compact crossbows that they held loosely slung over their saddlehorns. The weapons demanded a degree of interest, but it was the sigil embroidered on their surcoats that caught Bull's eye.

The Flaming Sword of Andraste. Only templars bore that emblem, and these days, templars were some of the most dangerous bastards around. It seemed that luck wasn’t as kind as Bull had hoped.

Reth slid up on his right side. She held her bow in one hand, three drawn arrows clasped in the other. Bull winced slightly as he caught sight of her expression. The elf wasn’t quite snarling, but there was nothing pleasant about her demeanor.

No one spoke at first, the four templars seeming content to take their measure in just the same manner that Bull was considering theirs. The men hadn’t drawn their weapons, which he found somewhat comforting. Planting his axe down in the snow, Bull folded his hands over the iron head and leaned his weight against it, waiting for whatever would come next. 

After a period of mutual scrutiny, one of the riders kicked his horse forward few feet. He was younger than Bull would have suspected, not much beyond twenty at a guess. Lifting one hand in greeting, he called out in a voice that was as clear as it was solemn. “Good day, friends.”

Bull blinked at the politeness. Straightening his posture, he nodded back to the man. “Good day.”

“It is quite the surprise to run into travelers out here. Not many are choosing the roads as of late.”

“Choice doesn’t always factor into it.”

“True enough.” The Templar intoned without any real emotion. He had sharp eyes, this one, and when he looked at Bull it was with pointed interest. “Where are you headed, friends?”

“North.”

“Toward Haven?”

“Is Haven to the north?”

“It is.”

“Then yeah, toward Haven.”

The Templar’s lips thinned into a line. “And what is your business out here?”

“Our own, as it goes.”

“We disagree.” Another of the templars, a tallish man on a large black horse, spoke up in clipped voice. He was red-haired, possessing of a neatly trimmed beard and a face that seemed contemptuous by nature. Bull noted the embroidered rank sigillary on his breast and realized this was an officer. The man looked down his long nose at Bull and then waved a hand to indicate his men. “You were running from us. Why?”

An officer and a member of the nobility, if Bull was any sort of judge. The man practical oozed aristocracy in all the worst ways. There was the obvious haughtiness, the tacit assumption of authority, and the vaguely whiny hint of someone used to getting his way. More than likely, this was the unwanted son of some minor Bann and in his estimation, that made him a little better than everyone else.

Bull thought the opposite to be more likely, but as he was also painfully aware of the sunlight winking off the tips of those crossbow bolts, he kept the thought private. “We didn’t know who we were running from. All we saw was four riders and given the state of things, it didn’t seem wise to take chances.”

“Quite so, the Highroad is damn lousy with bandits.” The noble sneered as though he’d deftly maneuvered his way to some unfathomable point. “Which brings us back to the question: what is your business out here?”

One of the bowmen shifted so that his weapon was almost pointed at Bull. The threat was plain and Bull could only shrug in response. “We aren’t bandits.” 

“Then what are you? It’s not often that we see armed Dalish and qunari running about together. Rather suspicious don’t you think?”

“Caravan guards.” The lie came out easily enough. Bull had plenty of practice. “We were contracted by a group leaving Redcliff.”

“And where are they?”

Bull grimaced, careful to inject his voice with the right amount of bitterness. “First we were hit by bandits, then by a storm. Maybe the others are still out there, but we were separated over a week ago. The two of us are just trying to make it back to a city.”

The noble’s lip curled and he jerked his chin toward Reth. “Why isn’t she talking?”

“I guess she doesn’t have much to say.” Bull risked a glance toward Reth and was dismayed to see that her outward demeanor hadn’t improved. “And unless I’m mistaken, people are still allowed to travel along the Highroad in peace. We aren’t bandits and we aren’t looking for trouble.”

The Templars exchanged a few dark looks, but his words didn’t go entirely unheard. In stark contrast to his officer’s glare, the young Templar was nodding in what seemed to be agreement.

“Nor do we wish harm on the good people of Ferelden.” The knight intoned steadily. “But we do have an obligation to protect those people as well. I’m sure you see the need of such questions in these times.”

They actually did not have any such obligation and could have very well minded their own business, but Bull just nodded back. “Aye, it’s good that someone’s taking an interest.”

“Then must understand that we will have to ask you to disarm before we let you on your way.”

“Of cour—what?”

“The mages have allies in every town. In an effort to defang the rebellion, all citizens are required to surrender their arms unless conscripted in service of a provincial governor. That is an order.”

Warning flags rose in his brain. In Orlais, a Templar making that kind of proclamation would be routine, but in Fereldan, it was a very different matter.

Bull spoke carefully. “Whose order?”

“Knight-Captain Legault.”

“I wasn’t aware that King Alistair had turned over command of his realm to the Order.”

“The Templars wield authority wherever the faithful may be found!” The noble interjected in a heated tone. “It’s best you remember that, ox-man.”

Which, unless Bull was mistaken, roughly translated to: ‘we don’t have any permission from the king, but we do have crossbows’. However lacking this may be from an ideological perspective, it was certainly persuasive on the practical level.

Bull considered the Templar, wondering if there was any give to the man. He liked his axe and would rather avoid giving it up. “You’re disarming everyone?”

“For the good of all.” The nobleman said with a particularly exaggerated sneer. “You may keep the bow and any knives shorter than your hand is long. Turn over everything else along with ten silver and you may go on your way.”

“Lot of people dying to coins, huh?”

“It’s a donation, friend.” The younger Templar said in a distressingly earnest fashion. He seemed to really believe this was how his order was meant to do things. “The mage rebellion is stretching our resources thin. We ask that all citizens give aid when able.”

“All good citizens.” His officer chimed in without making any pretense at being earnest.

Hmmm. Much as Bull disliked being extorted, he was fairly sure he’d take to summary execution with even less enthusiasm. There was only one thing he could possibly do. 

He sighed, opening his mouth to agree to the terms, when one of the crossbowmen spoke up. 

“We should take the elf with us too.”

Bull paused.

The young Templar turned to his companion. “The elf?”

“People are saying the Dalish are moving around more than usual lately. ‘Could be they’re up to something.” He pointed a finger at Reth. “It couldn’t hurt to interrogate her some.”

A cold feeling settled in Bull’s stomach. He could guess what that ‘interrogation’ would entail. Templars were practically synonymous with abuses of power in Thedas. Whatever occurred, he felt certain Reth would be worse off as a result.

The Ben-Hassrith would appraise that as a perfectly acceptable outcome. Above all things, his mission and his report were paramount. What was one elf in the grander scheme of things?

“Yes, perhaps that would be best.” The noble flicked his reins idly. “We’ll take the elf with us. After we’ve questioned her, we’ll deliver her to Haven.” He clucked his tongue in a decisive fashion and grinned at Bull. “That is where you are headed, I recall.”

Bull turned to Reth. She had been watching the proceedings in narrow-eyed silence, her long ears pinned back like those of riled cat. She may have been ignorant to the words being spoken but clearly trying to derive some sort of meaning from the tone. Her white-knuckled grip on her bow and the bunched muscles at her jaw betrayed her nerves, but otherwise, she was keeping her composure. 

She shot a glance back at him, and seeing that he was looking, offered a slight nod before flicking her gaze back to the Templars. 

Too much trust in that gesture. She was letting him make the call. 

Damn it.

He hesitated then, not out of true ambivalence but more to prepare himself for what was about to happen. The storm was still gathering off to the right, a roiling mass of dark clouds drawing steadily closer. It would be here soon and Bull supposed he’d be lucky if he was forced to suffer through it. Heaving a sigh, he turned to gaze up at the Templar officer.

“You know,” Bull mused aloud. “If you’d just stopped at money and weapons, we could have all walked away with our lives.”

The silence that followed his words was a familiar one. He watched as grins faded, as eyes hardened, as hands tightened on horse reins and weapon stocks. Once the killing started, things would be loud, but for now, the world waited.

The crossbowman farthest to the right jerked his weapon up. A bowstring slapped the air and Bull only caught the faintest flicker of motion as Reth’s arrow hissed forward with a serpent’s menace.

It struck the Templar just below his cheekbone, punching through his skull and ramming into the back of his helmet with a solid ‘bonk’. The man’s head whipped back from impact and he released a honking gurgle as he toppled sideways.

Reth’s hand’s blurred. Her next two arrows were in the air before Bull could even react. One thumped into the second archer’s saddle and the other caught him near the groin. He screamed and fired his weapon out of reflex. The bolt left the weapon with a metallic click and shot into the ground near his horse’s legs. 

The animal reared. Men shouted, and a strong, slender hand caught Bull at the elbow.

“ _Shelt!_ ” Reth screamed at him and bolted in the direction of the trees at a dead sprint. He guessed she was telling him to run, and needed no further encouragement.

They only got to run for about ten yards on the highroad before their course forced them into the deeper snow. Behind them, a horse bellowed as its rider kicked it into a fast gallop. The templars shouted to one another and the thunderous clatter of hoofbeats on stone sounded like the roar of an approaching tide.

Bull labored through the snow as quickly as he was able, boots sinking deep into the white mush and making each step a liability. He knew it was futile, even if the trees were only a hundred yards away, it might as well have been a hundred miles for all the good it would do him.

Reth had no such problems. She covered the snowy ground with the deftness of a hare, got a few dozen yards ahead of him, and then whirled in place with her bow lifted.

Two more arrows flicked past him, one close enough to his head that he felt the breeze of its passage against his cheek. He heard a furious clamor of noise at his back but dared not turn around to look.

“Split up!” He roared at her, thrusting a finger off to their left without breaking stride. “Go! That way, go!”

Reth fired one final arrow, and to his surprise, actually obeyed him. She broke off, cutting diagonal and toward the trees, and Bull was left on his own and very much behind.

“Shit! Shit!” Each ragged exhale of his breath carried the word like a private chant. He gave it everything he had. His breath burned in his lungs and his legs felt weak with effort. Keeping ahold of his axe as he went just made things harder, and Bull knew he was screwed. “Shit! Shit! Shit!”

Hoof beats directly behind him. Bull shot a look over his shoulder, saw only the bright flash of metal, and ducked his head forward on reflex.

Something caught him the back of his pack with the force of a hammer blow. He pitched forward, tripped on the tangle of his cloak, and went down, nearly gutting himself on his own axe as he did.

Hooves pounded into the ground mere inches from his face as a horse sped past. Bull sputtered through a mouthful of snow and realized with amazement that he wasn’t hurt.

He stumbled to his feat, still holding onto his axe by some miracle, and looked around wildly. Only one of the remaining Templars had followed him, the other two veering off to pursue Reth. For a wild moment, he considered running in that direction to help, but then remembered he had a more immediate concern.

The Templar who’d struck him wheeled his horse around some twenty yards from where Bull stood. It was the officer, that noble cunt with the shitty attitude. He rode with a horseman’s long experience, shifting fluidly in the saddle as he directed the riled animal back to face Bull.

Bull rolled his shoulders and brought the axe to bear. A grim smile stretched across his lips, and in a near seamless transition, his fear faded into excitement.

It was a tough thing to fight a man on horseback. They had the reach, the speed, and a blow coming from above would carry a hell of a lot more power. A good rider would use the mount as a weapon, either trampling you at speed or simply using the bulk of the animal to shove you about until they got around to chopping your head off your shoulders. The trick was to get them out of the saddle, but as with most things, it was easier said than done. 

The noble spun his sword with a flashy twirl and kicked his horse into a gallop, angling the animal toward Bull’s blind side. This was no bandit with a stolen sword. He knew his business.

Bull waited for him, slow and patient. He kept his eye on the rider as the horse ate up the distant between them.

 _Steady._

_Steady._

He waited to the last moment to step aside, swinging his axe up to intercept the hard downswing of the templar’s blade. Metal rang bright against metal, and the horse thundered past. 

The Templar sawed at the reins, brought his horse around in a tight sweep and swung again before Bull had fully recovered. He ducked this time, only just avoiding losing part of his left horn, and lunged backwards in an effort to get some distance.

The Templar didn’t let him. He rode the horse in a tight circle, using the advantage of his position to rain a flurry of sharp blows down at Bull’s head.

Bull parried franticly as he fought to keep footing in the calf-deep snow. The horse was no less a threat. It had been bred for war and it snapped its teeth at Bull in a game attempt at biting him.

That, more than anything, gave him some real inspiration.

He waited until the Templar overextended and brought his mount close enough for this work. Lurching away from a scything swing of the Templar’s sword, he stepped back, whirled in place, and putting the full weight of his body behind the blow, he spun his axe in a wide arc and slammed it against the horse’s jaw.

Hot blood splattered across his face and neck. The animal screamed, rearing upwards in reaction to the sudden trauma. A great convulsion twisted through the length of its body, and then it was pitching forward with the inexorable certainty of a falling tree.

Bull cursed as he dived to avoid the falling animal. The snow cushioned his fall but also prevented him from getting far enough away to avoid the thrashing tangle of the horse’s hooves. One of them clipped him on the shoulder with enough force to jar every bone in his body and flip him violently onto his back.

He struggled to his feet, putting one hand to his shoulder to assess the damage. Nothing seemed broken, but the bone-deep ache already settling into his muscles was a sure sign of the horrendous bruise to come.

A few yards away, the Templar was also getting up. He looked a little dazed for having been thrown from his mount, but he recovered quick enough to slide his shield free of the downed horse’s saddle.

It was only then that Bull realized he’d lost hold of his own weapon. He spied an axe-shaped indentation in the snow a few feet away and lunged for it. His fingers groped blindly through the slush for a few frenzied moments, then caught hold of the wrapped haft. He yanked it free of the snow and rounded on his foe.

The Templar held his shield in the characteristic style of his order, tilted slightly toward himself to better deflect a mage’s fire. This was not the iconic tower shield, however, but rather a much smaller wooden shield of a circular design better suited to a mounted scout. He held his sword angled over the top portion of the rim, its point sharp and glittering in the fading sunlight.

Bull offered him a grim smile. “So, you gotta be regretting this by now, huh?”

The Templar’s pale face flushed red and he started forward in a perfectly cautious fashion. He checked his footing with every step, never lowered his guard, and never once took his eyes off of Bull as he moved.

Great technique and discipline. Too bad it mattered fuck all.

Bull put all of his considerable weight and size behind an overhanded swing that could not have been more obvious if he’d announced it with a written letter. It swung through the air and the Templar couldn’t do much aside from raise his shield in a sadly optimistic display. 

The axehead slammed into the banded wood with a splintery crunch. The human stumbled backward with the force of blow, recovered his footing after a few steps, and reset his shield immediately.

Bull snarled as he twisted the axe around and swung again. The blood was growing hot in his veins. It seemed that his axe was lighter, his body less tired. He forgot about Reth and the other Templars then. His world narrowed to the contest between him and the other man, and that was where Bull was at his best.

No place for finesse now. Bull hammered blow after blow upon on the man’s shield and drove him back with such force that a counterattack was out of the question. It took a few hits, but something finally gave.

One particularly harsh blow brought with it the sharp crack of wood splitting, and beneath that, the meatier crunch of the man’s forearm as it splintered.

The Templar stumbled back with a short cry and nearly fell. The broken sections of his shield flapped about his injured arm like old shutters clapping together in a storm as he flailed to keep his balance.

Bull lunged forward and struck out at the Templar before he could regain his bearing. The man recovered with surprising speed and brought his sword up just in time to barely turn Bull’s blow aside. The movement brought him inside of Bull’s reach, and knowing he wouldn’t be able to bring the axe around in time, Bull took one hand off the haft and punched him in the mouth.

The Templar squawked and fell down in a rattling of chainmail. Bull took a step and kicked the man’s sword arm with the boot. The weapon flew out his grasp and promptly vanished under a nearby drift.

“No!” The Templar raised his unbroken arm in a warding gesture. “No!”

Bull’s axe cleaved straight through his arm and into his chest in a single motion. The Templar convulsed around the heavy blade just once before sinking back to the snow and going still.

"Yes, fucker.” Bull hissed as he wrenched his weapon free. He straightened up, looked from dead horse to dead Templar, and drew in a long breath.

He gave himself the span of that breath to force away the more bloody paths his thoughts were taking. It was always the same when violence came about. The temptation to lose himself to it, to slip into that state where death and chaos seemed the natural order; that temptation was always there.

The Qun forbade it. Mastery of oneself begins in denial and ends with acceptance. 

Bull repeated the mantra to himself, then released his breath in a powerful exhalation. The simple exercise bolstered the deep reaches of his control and the world expanded as his lungs emptied. 

Then, he took up his axe and ran to help Reth.

~o0o~


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter this time around, a larger one to come soon.

~o0o~

Two unattended horses were standing just beyond the treeline as Bull reached it. They must have not liked the scent of him, blood and foreign flesh alike, because as he drew close, both animals shied away nervously.

Bull ignored them entirely. He could hear the sounds of fighting now, the flashes of motion and sharp ringing of metal leading him through the trees until he found Reth and the templars.

The archer whom Reth had wounded in the leg was already dead. His corpse knelt by the base of a tree, one shoulder resting against its trunk as though he had staggered against it just before his legs gave out. The loaded crossbow dangled from his limp hands. Two fresh arrows protruding from his torso, the slender shafts swaying slightly as they caught the breeze blowing between the pines.

Some twenty yards away, Reth was circling around the last of their attackers.

The remaining Templar was wounded. Spatters of dark blood littered the ground near his feet and streaked the polished metal of his right greave in a pattern of branching rivulets that stood out stark against the gleaming metal.

Reth prowled around him as a cautious distance. She had shed cloak, pack, and bow during the pursuit, seeming both thinner and smaller than he remembered as she paced easily through the cumbersome snow.

Bull’s skidded to a halt and the Templar’s head whipped toward him at the sound. It was the young man who had first addressed them. He looked younger and a good deal more frightened than he had a few minutes prior. The sight of Bull caused him to flinch, and realizing that he was now outnumbered, he shuffled awkwardly in an effort to put them both in his line of sight.

It wasn’t going to work. Bull stepped forward, intending to flank the man so that they could finish this, but the moment he did, Reth let out a loud hiss.

He drew up short and looked to her. Reth was glaring back at him, the sharp features of her face twisted into an expression of savage outrage. Keeping eye contact, she spread her arms slightly and bared her teeth in a voiceless snarl before turning her attention back to the Templar. 

Bull blinked. Was she…was she actually telling him not to interfere?

The truly fucked up thing was that he obeyed in a near automatic response. Bull would have liked to say that it was out of puzzlement, but honestly, he was mostly intrigued.

Reth never quit her circling. The Templar attempted to keep his attention divided between the two of them, and that proved a mistake that almost cost him his life.

She lunged forward without warning, swiping at him with her hatchet. The man moved his shield to block the attack, but Reth simply turned her momentum into a feint and darted backwards.

This process repeated itself several times. Reth remained in constant motion. She alternated the direction of her circling at random, only to lunge forward with her weapons every time it looked like the Templar was lowering his guard.

His first thought was that she was teasing out an opening, but after watching her fail to commit to an attack time and time again, he began to understand what he was looking at.

The Templar wore a suit of ringmail that could easily turn a blade. His sword and shield were tailor made for combat and he had the training to back them. In a fight, he had all the advantages on her.

Except, that armor was heavy and those weapons were cumbersome. He wasn’t being given any chance to catch his breath and that leg wound was still leaking.

Reth wasn’t fighting the poor bastard. She was bleeding him.

Either the Templar arrived at the same conclusion or else he simply got tired of being baited. The next time Reth moved in to strike, he dropped his shield and stabbed at her stomach in a neat thrust.

Reth twisted out of its path and darted away. The Templar pursued her this time, trudging forward through the snow at as quick a pace as he was capable. 

Bull shook his head. If it were him, he would have put his back to a tree and forced Reth onto the offensive. Moving around was just playing into her hand.

The Templar took a few well-aimed swings at her. He clipped a chunk of bark off a tree with one of them, but he never once got close to hitting her. The elf was too quick and too careful to keep this distance constant. 

It did not last long. Either his foot caught on something hidden beneath the snow or else he just put too much weight on his injured leg. Whatever the cause, his right leg buckled after another failed thrust and he stumbled forward as he his lost balance.

Reth reacted so swiftly it was if she’d known it would happen. She covered the distance between them in bound, her axe whipping out to hook around the top rim of his shield.

She yanked on the weapon with all of her weight behind it. The sudden tug forward lurched the Templar into a stumbling gait and then Reth abruptly jammed her axe back toward him. 

The blunt metal axe-head smashed into his jaw with an audible crunch. The Templar’s went limp almost immediately, his knees buckling as a thin stream of bloody spit streaked from his mouth.

Hitting the ground woke him right back up, but before he could do more than raise his arms in half-lucid reaction, Reth leapt on top of him.

She pinned his sword arm beneath a knee and raised her axe just slightly before chopping it down and into the man’s upraised face. The first blow won the fight and the second killed him. She hit him five times in all.

When it was over, the small grove felt preternaturally still. Bull could hear Reth’s panted breathing now, soft and harsh all at the same time. He shook himself, feeling as though he were freeing himself from a deep trance, and took a step forward just as Reth turned to look back at him. 

Bull drew in a breath.

The elf’s face was spotted with blood from the man she had just killed, her grey eyes now dark with a violent confluence of emotion. She tilted her face upwards, met his gaze, and smiled.

It was a fierce, exultant grin that bared teeth and celebrated things most people would not speak of in civilized company. For the first time, he saw the face of that primal thing that lurked inside of himself, and all Bull could think was that it was beautiful. 

Wild, savage, unrestrained, but so far removed from the ugly thing he’d always pictured.

His blood heated for reasons that had nothing to do with battle. Suddenly, all those idle thoughts he’d directed toward Reth’s femininity over the past few days came roaring back with a vengeance.

He started for her, intending to…intending to do something. His thought process had abruptly devolved into the thing he wanted and how much he wanted it. Letting his axe fall as he went, Bull grinned right back at her and—

\--and he saw the Templar archer move a moment too late.

Somehow, three arrows hadn’t been enough to kill the man. He still knelt at the base of that same tree, but at some point in the fight, he’d gathered up his weapon and know held it pointed toward the elf in shaky hands. 

Reth was facing toward Bull, blissfully unaware of what was occurring twenty yards to her right. A charge of panic raced though Bull. He lifted a hand, opening his mouth to call out a warning. 

The Templar fired.

Time seemed to dilate then, a flood of adrenaline and horror dragging those bare instances into a small eternity. Bull perceived the bolt as it streaked over the snowy ground, possessed by the sick certainty that it would find its mark. There was a instant of knowledge, infinitely brief and all too terrible, where he realized that there was nothing he could do to stop this.

Then, in defiance of all rationale, Reth stepped out the way.

She did not dodge. That was important. The elf never one turned to look in the Templar’s direction, never had the time to recognize the threat let alone react to it. No, without apparent prompting, she froze her forward progress and angled her upper body backwards in the composed, sinuous motion of a dancer repeating a well-practiced step.

The bolt whistled past her chest with a rasping hiss of metal grazing leather. A few centimeters to the left, and it would have caught her in the rib cage and punched through to her heart. 

Time lapsed into its normal speed and Reth immediately spun on the man. She released a furious shriek and rushed toward him as a full sprint. She crossed the ground in several fast bounds, and though the templar struggled to crank the mechanical weapon, there was little he could do to stop her from burying her axe in his skull. Red blood splattered over snow and the fight was decidedly over. 

Bull stood motionless as this all played out before him, one hand still dangling limp in the air before him.

Had…had, she just…?

No, he must have missed something. Reth probably noticed the Templar move out of the corner of her eye and reacted. Elves could be as quick as deep water currents when they wanted to be, and it stood to reason that their reflexes were every bit as sharp. Besides, given what he knew of the thought process that ran through Reth’s half-crazy brain, she might have known that the man was alive all along.

That, or she was a time-traveling mystical elf who could dodge crossbow bolts without even thinking. Both options had merit.

“Bull!”

Reth shoved him hard in the chest. Blinking, He looked down to find her staring up at him with concerned eyes. “What?”

“ _Ith queves re’lene ti?_ ” She patted at him brusquely in what seemed to be a check for wounds and that swatted at his arm. “ _Alect, veneries cun lel’vallan tiere te atcha vien!_ ”

“Would you stop hitting me?” Bull growled at her. He was confused and the fading rush of battle had left him sore and in no mood for this. “Even if it is just gibberish, use your damn words!” 

Reth frowned. “ _Nosos te atcha veneries vien!_ ”

“Okay, use some different words!” Bull spread his arms in frustration. “I’m getting pretty tired of dealing with this, and I swear by the Qun, if you turn out to be some kind of temporal anomaly I’m going to—”

Reth whacked him on the chest again. “ _Atcha,_ Bull, _te atcha!_ ”

“Alright.” Bull lifted a hand to forestall any further assaults. “Now, you’re pushing it.”

The elf gave him a heated glance and then whirled around to stab her finger toward the sky. 

As if on cue, the wind suddenly picked up and a rumbling crash of thunder shook the trees around them.

Reth glared back at Bull. “ _Atcha._ ”

It was one of those moments where understanding did nothing to make the situation better. Lifting a hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose, Bull nodded.

“Yeah, yeah, ‘storm’, I get it.”

~o0o~

One hour later, they were back on the road and the storm was upon them.

Bull had finally discovered the true depths of misery. He had his head bowed, eyes squinted as icy-cold blasts of snow slammed into him from seemingly every angle. The wind howled in his ears, bit deep through his cloak, and carried frozen shards that ripped and stung at his exposed skin. Visibility was impossible, and were it not for the cobblestone’s beneath his feet, Bull was sure he would have gotten lost by this point.

Reth was ahead of him by a few strides, the hazy outline of her silhouette barely distinguishable even at this close a distance. She moved quickly in spite of everything, and on the few occasions he slowed, she would invariably materialize out of the snowfall and starting tugging at his arm until he sped up.

Bull was too worn out to even protest. The last several days, now compounded by a recent fight, had finally brought him to his limit. He kept going more out of stubbornness than anything else, but the bone-deep fatigue was pulling at him with every step. He couldn’t even feel his legs anymore, but then, that was probably a blessing.

Not for the first time, he wished they had taken the Templar’s horses. It was wistful thinking. The animals had all been blown from a hard day’s ride and wouldn’t have gotten them far before giving out. That was all assuming that any one of the beasts would have tolerated Bull’s weight in the first place.

Mostly, Bull wished that things were different. He wished that he wasn’t in a storm, and had possessed the good sense to turn down this mission when it had first been offered to him.

Lighting flared off to his right. The murky haze of the storm suddenly swelled with yellowish illumination as the sharp crack sent a tremor through the earth. The strobe repeated twice more and then receded as the howling darkness fell upon them once more.

“We’ve got to get off the road!” He shouted at Reth, the sound swallowed so completely he could barely even hear it above the wind. “Now!”

She heard him, somehow, and turning, offered a frantic shake of her head before pointing forward into the impenetrable haze of the storm.

Bull would have been angry if he possessed the capacity for it. That was the forth time he’d tried to convince her to go to ground, and it was the forth time she’d refused in her animated way.

They needed to find shelter. Surviving the night under these circumstances was uncertain at best, and damn near impossible if they remained out in the open.

So, why didn’t he leave her to it and find a rock to hide behind? The answer was as clear as it was frustrating: after everything they’d been through together over the last week, Bull couldn’t rationalize abandoning her and having it all be for nothing. Live or die, he was trapped on this path and resolved to see it through.

The passage of time grew indistinct. He stumbled forward, conscious only of his discomfort, and then, quiet suddenly, Reth had a hold on his arm and was yanking him off the road.

He registered the sudden change with a tired snort of breath. Reth dragged him through the snow, passing boulders and trees as they cut a diagonal path away from the paved highroad.

Had she finally decided to find shelter? There were a few more options now that they’d reached the more densely forested base of the mountain range, but Bull couldn’t see the distinct advantage. He tried to steer her toward a promising ridge that looked big enough to screen them from the wind, but Reth only tugged harder on his arm until Bull gave up the fight.

They covered perhaps a half-mile in this fashion, their progress slowed by the deep snow and violent winds, but then, they stumbled on the last thing Bull would have expected.

He thought it was just a small hill at first, maybe even just a large boulder that had become half-buried in the snow. It wasn’t until they got close that he realized that the hill’s slope was at an unusually sharp angle.

He noticed other things then, his somewhat impaired thought process picking out details that seemed relevant. The “hill” was made from cut logs sealed with dark pitch. A jutting chimney punched upwards from the thick snow that had accumulated along its slanting rise. He could even make out the dark depression of a doorframe.

“Son of a bitch…” Bull swore, his voice a croaking whisper of disbelief. For a single moment of dawning realization, he forgot about the storm raging round them and the aching exhaustion that dragged at his limbs.

It was a cabin, and he’d never been so glad to see anything in his entire life.

~o0o~


	5. Four Walls and a Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ~o0o~

Ten minutes later, Bull’s outlook had changed completely.

They’d found a trapper’s hut, one of the small, single-room shelters that would be built during the summer months in preparation for extended stays during the long hunting season. Bull could cross the length of the structure in under four strides no matter which direction he choose. Sable traps hung on iron hooks along the walls, while a single pallet took up most of the room, the yellowed straw of its mattress smelling only slightly musty.

Reth had been the one to get them inside. After trying and failing to pry open the only door, she’d gone around to the side of the cabin and cut the leather ties that held the wooden window closed. It had been an effort for Bull to squeeze through the tight frame, but he’d managed given his motivation.

A stored collection of dry wood allowed them to start a fire in the clay-lined depression that stood in the center of the room. Flames licked upwards from the burning logs, oozing warmth and sending thin trails of smoke up through the crude chimney set into the roof.

Both of them sprawled as close as possible to the fire, luxuriating in the radiated heat as it began to chase the freezing chill from their skin. The wind howled as it found tiny gaps in the walls, but even so, the storm was a muted and blessedly distant memory.

Bull sighed as he shifted his weight in search of a more comfortable position. He realized he’d never bothered to take off his pack, and after slipping it from his aching shoulders, he looked over at Reth to see how she was faring.

The elf sat slouched with her back resting against her own pack. Her eyes were closed, and though Bull would not have been surprised if she were asleep, he spoke to her anyway. “So, is this your place?”

She cracked a lid to regard him sidelong. _“Ati queth avien?”_

Bull struggled to think of a way to explain his question before giving up. In lieu of anything more profound, he just waved a hand to dismiss the whole mess.

Reth lifted one shoulder in a disinterested shrug and closed her eyes once more. Their conversations had really come a long way.

“Nah, of course it isn’t.” Bull murmured mostly to himself. “Not much point in hunting furs if you can’t speak a trade language. Might as well be a pickpocket without fingers.”

There were other reasons for why Reth would know about this place, but Bull had a nagging suspicion that she’d never laid eyes on the cabin prior to today. She’d led him straight to it in the middle of a snowstorm. Bull doubted he could have done the same with a map and clearly marked signs.

It was the uncanny sort of behavior that he was beginning to attribute to her, but Bull didn’t give one solid shit right at this moment. There were four walls and a fire. Reth’s creepifying weirdness did not factor into any of that.

Banishing his thoughts, he closed his eye to entertain the idea of sleep. It sounded lovely, but he was also hungry and that meant moving.

Bull forced himself to his feet, ignoring the protests of overworked muscles as he did so. After spreading his bedroll over the straw pallet, he recovered his discarded pack and squatted down in front of it. The leather was torn from where the templar’s sword had cut into it, but it remained serviceable. There had been a silver-lining to being accosted on the highroad. Those templars had been carrying plenty of food and storm or no, he and Reth still endeavored to loot the dead.

As a result, they now had packs of sausage, preserved meat, and a kind of heavy oat bread filled with nuts and made with liberal amounts of honey. It was the sort of convenient, heavy fare that someone would pack when they planned to be traveling a long distance. Good for templar scouts, even better for a starving qunari.

Reth perked up when she saw he was moving. The elf never seemed content to sit still while Bull was doing something. She fumbled with her own pack, withdrawing similar rations that included a jar of orange preserves. The jam seemed to be of special interest to her, and she added an unsettling amount of it to her first piece of bread.

They ate without speaking, passing and accepting the food with simple grunts of acknowledgement. The fire crackled merrily, the wind rattled the wood and clay structure, and Bull realized this was the calmest he'd felt in weeks. A big meal ususally put him right to sleep, but this time around, he could feel a bit of life returning to his body.

Reth also grew noticeably more animated as they finished their meal. Getting to her feet, the elf began to meander about the narrow confines of their shelter, poking at the various hunting tools with an expression of pleased curiosity. It wasn't long before she let out an exclamation and held up a small cast-iron pot that had been hiding in one corner of the room. Hoisting it, she smiled in Bull’s direction as she hurried past and toward the room’s solitary window.

They’d managed to get to wooden boards refastened after Reth had severed them in process of gaining entrance, but she wasted no time in loosening the ties and flinging the window open.

Bull swore as the storm poured into the room and blasted him with a icy gust of air. Shivering, he watched Reth lean out to shovel snow into the pot, bringing it back indoors full to the brim with white powder. She resealed the window with some effort, and, crossing over to the fire, she set the pot at its edge of the fire and shed her cloak.

It was getting a bit warm in the cabin now that the fire had been going for a while, so Bull followed suit and sat bare-chested by the fire.

He considered the melting snow in mild bemusement as it began to steam. They’d been boiling snow for water in his cookpot for the past week, so he couldn’t understand Reth’s sudden enthusiasm. Jerking a finger toward it, he looked at her. “What’s that for?”

Reth smiled as she tugged a small bundle of fabric from her pack. Lifting it, she reached down a picked up the pot. _“Avule mores lien lavette!”_

“Sure, have fun with whatever that is.”

Leaving her to it, Bull began rooting around in his pack for a special something that he’d found on one of the templars. Though he’d made every effort to avoid taking anything that wouldn’t directly influence their survival, Bull had come across one luxury he was not above indulging.

He’d just discovered the surprised beneath a hunk of sausage when he became aware of rustling sound coming from behind him. Turning, he saw Reth facing away from him, the cookpot resting on the dirt floor by her feet. Before he could ask what she was up to, the elf casually pulled off her shirt and tossed it to the side.

Bull cocked a brow. Interesting.

A glance told him that Reth’s shirt had been concealing quite a lot. She wasn’t as skinny as he’d first assumed. Slender, certainly, but now there was no way to overlook the strength in her shoulders or disguise the sinuous play of muscles along her back as she bent down to loosen the ties of her boots. 

It made for a mighty compelling sight. Much as he would have liked to follow her progress, Bull turned back around to give Reth some privacy. The muffled thumps of cloth hitting the ground seemed loud in the quiet cabin, and a few moments later, he could hear the sloshing of water as Reth began to bath.

This was hard to ignore. Women didn’t typically strip down and start bathing around men. Not unless they were offering a very blatant hint.

Was she hinting? He thought back to the clearing, to Reth standing over a corpse she'd made, and he thought about that feral, almost welcoming smile that had cut across her features.

He could have sworn that there was a promise there. The vivid memory sent another burst of warmth through his veins and he wondered what she’d do if he stood up and went to her.

After an unsatisfying debate, he decided against it. He really didn’t want to frighten her with an advance that she wasn’t expecting. They had an imperfect understanding of one another, and scaring Reth in that fashion was not something he wanted on his conscience. He tried not to be too aware of the sounds coming from behind him and after what seemed an eternity, he heard a rustle of cloth and then she stepped back into his field of vision.

She’d changed shirts and now wore only a cloth tunic that fell past her knees. Her hair was damp and free of its braids, hanging a good several inches longer now that it was no longer bound up. Combing her fingers through the tangled strands, she offered Bull a handful of soggy fabric and swept a magnanimous hand back toward the pot of bathwater she’d used.

Bull considered the proposal. A bath sounded unpleasant given the circumstances, but then again, he’d been on the trail for a while and was getting pretty ripe. Deciding to air on the side of civility, he took the cloth and nodded his thanks.

The bath proved to be shitty. Bull stripped down and scrubbed himself clean, shivering violently as the air leeched the warmth from his skin. His eye kept darting back to Reth, half-expecting to catch her sneaking a peek, but she kept her back to him the whole way through.

No, he wasn’t disappointed.

After finishing and redressing, he made his way back to the fire feeling marginally fresher and forcibly invigorated. Taking hold of his pack, he finally fished out the thing he was really looking forward to.

The flask had been in the pack of the templar he had killed. It held maybe a half-liter in total, the thick glass covered in a leather skin to cushion it from breaking. There was an inscription stamped on the leather, but time had worn the letters into faded blurs.

Bull yanked the worn cork from the bottle’s neck, shivering for a completely different reason as he breathed in the fiery vapors that rose from the contents.

A stiff drink. On a truly horrible day, Bull could think of no acceptable substitute. After a month of misery and enforced sobriety, it was practically of the divine. He tilted the flask and let a mouthful burn its way down to his stomach. Fereldan whiskey always bore a strong flavor of peat mixed with iodine, and this time was no different.

Bull sighed. Damn, if that didn’t hit the spot…

He lowered the flask and became aware of Reth’s regard. She flicked a glance between him and the bottle in his hand, her meaning so clear that language actually fell short in this case.

Bull passed it over with a chuckle. “Careful, it’ll kick you in the ass.”

She took the flask with a lopsided grin. It seemed to amuse her for some reason, and after turning it in every which direction, she lifted it to her nose and inhaled.

Her nostrils flared and she snorted. Bull managed not to burst out laughing, but even so, he had to cover his mouth to hide his smile. 

Reth eyed him primly, wearing only the faintest of grins to betray her own amusement. Bull laughed then, and jerked his chin to the flask. “There’s no shame in backing down. It’s not for everyone.”

Her only response was to lift the glass to her lips and tip a generous mouthful of the fiery drink down her throat. She swallowed it quickly, baring her teeth in a hiss that could have been from either discomfort or appreciation. Bobbing her head in a tight nod, she handed the bottle back. 

Bull took it and immediately chased his first drink with another. The whiskey went down just fine the second time around, and when it hit his stomach, a warm flush spread through him like a welcome caress.  
Feeling very much at peace with the world, he held the bottle out to Reth.

She took it, which was something of a surprise, and soon enough, the two of them were passing it back and forth like old friends at a bar.

They started up their language game after a few minutes, juggling words as each tried to understand the other’s explanation. Where previously this had been somewhat tedious, Bull suddenly found the exercise a good deal more enjoyable. Purely by coincidence, it became funnier the more he drank.

Reth laughed with him as their increasingly botched attempts to describe things devolved into absurd gestures and fits of laughter. At some point, she started leaning against him for support, her presence a warm and soft weight that Bull found he did not mind at all.

It was around then that things changed somewhat. A wildly inaccurate attempt at describing a dwarf sent Reth in a fit of giggles so violent that she swatted at him as she tried to stop laughing. Her hand lingered on his chest for balance, and there it remained. 

Both of them seemed to become aware of it at the same time. Bull looked down at her hand, bronzed and delicate against his paler skin, and then turned to find her staring up at him.

The alcohol had lit a warm flush in her cheeks, the faint lines of her tattoos seeming darker as the firelight played along her skin. Her eyes were big and bright, the molten silver of their depths entrancing as she met his gaze.

Silence fell between them. Her gaze drifted down from his eye, perhaps toward his mouth, and then she took her own lower lip between her teeth. The small gesture set his heart to racing and Bull found himself reaching out to cup the side of Reth’s face.

Her skin was smooth beneath his rough fingertips. Bull stroked a thumb along the rise of her cheekbone, tracing along the billowing tattoos as he watched her for any confirmation that this was all right. She closed her eyes to lean into the caress, cooing a soft word that he didn’t pick up, and then, without warning, she lunged at him.

The kiss was hard and fast. Reth pressed her lips firmly against his and just about knocked him off-balance with the force of it. After only a bare second of this, she pulled back several inches and looked at him.

Bull chuckled. “You were hinting.”

He closed the distance between them and kissed her. She groaned happily, her lips working against his as she wrapped a hand around the back of his neck to hold him in place. Gentle was clearly not Reth’s game. She started out fast. The kiss felt more like combat than some barfights Bull had been involved in. Every movement of her lips was a challenge, an harsh encouragement for more than he was giving.

Bull was not one to pass up a challenge. Hooking his arm around her hips, he hauled her roughly into his lap and lowered a hand to give the firm curve of her ass a playful squeeze. 

Reth breathed a short, excited gasp and his tongue immediately slipped between her parted lips. She tasted wonderful, sweet and tinged with a spicy heat from the whiskey they’d been drinking. Her arms twined about his neck and she went pliant, allowing him guide the pace of things. 

Bull went painfully erect. The quiet, hungry sounds that Reth was making left him feeling like a 16-year old karasaad on his first trip to the Tamassrans. He was already straining against the confines of his pants when she took things a step farther by grinding her hips against him in a single, deliberate motion.

A growl escaped his throat. The fingers of his right hand tightened on her ass as he pulled her toward him in a mindless demand to repeat the motion.

Reth released a smug moan as she acquiesced, hips rolling as she pressed herself against his erection in a way that temporarily blanked his higher brain function. He loosened his grip once he had a mind to, giving her room to maneuver as the delightful friction bore into the depths of his stomach.

Reth mouth was by his ear a moment later. She bit it, teeth scraping along the lobe and goosebumps raced down his back. Pulling back, she hissed out a single word in a breathy whisper. _“Bullll.”_

Hearing his name drawn out in that sing-song accent completely eroded his control. He was ready to start hiking up her shirt so they could get on with it when Reth pulled away. She eased backwards to plant her hands on his shoulders and spoke in that same breathless tone. _“Al veho aquien?”_

“Huh?” Bull tried to comprehend her meaning through the fog of lust that was clouding his brain. It wasn’t easy to switch gears when every fiber of his being was demanding he pull her back down to him. “What’s that?”

“Bed?” She spoke the word uncertainly and then jabbed a finger over at his bedroll. “Good. Yes?”

“Oh, right.” Bull inhaled deeply and shook his mind clear. He supposed a dirt floor wasn’t the best choice when there were other options. “Sure, good.”

They both rose to their feet quickly, Reth tugging insistently at his arm as she led him over to the furs. As soon as they reached the bed, she startled him by planting both hands square in the middle of his chest and shoving hard. It was not a gentle push and he stumbled backwards to half-fall, half-collapse onto the soft furs beneath him.

Chuckling, Bull propped himself up on an elbow and peered up at the elf standing in front of him. “Gonna to be like that, is it?”

She took a step closer, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth Reaching down, she took hold of the hem of her tunic, and without preamble, pulled it up and off her body. There was nothing teasing about the gesture, nothing coy and or playful about it either. She simply stripped the garment off to reveal that she was wearing exactly nothing underneath.

His mouth went a little dry.

Naked was a very good look for Reth. She had an athlete’s build, her slender frame lined with pleasing contours of lean muscle. The firelight glowed copper against her tan skin, casting shadows that followed the gentle slope of her hips as they tapered into her narrow waist. Small, proud breasts rested high on her chest, the dark nipples already firm with excitement. She let him look for several seconds, taking the opportunity to roll her shoulders into a languid stretch that emphasized her chest deliberately. 

No, nothing shy about her at all, and Bull would be damned if that confidence wasn’t one of the sexiest things he’d ever seen.

Reth shifted forward, slowly lowering herself until she knelt straddling his waist. She ran the fingers of one hand down his chest, short nails lightly grazing his skin and causing his muscles to jump in reaction. Her expression grew outright mischievous as she watched him. “Good?”

Bull sat a little more upright and lifted one hand to grasp her right hip. “Very good.”

She laughed and ducked in to kiss him. Her hands slid upwards along his chest and neck until they framed his face, the soft press of leather on his right cheek making him dimly aware that she was still wearing one of her gloves. The thought only surfaced for an instant before being supplanted by more pressing concerns. He let Reth control the kiss this time around, focusing his own attention on exploring new territory.

His hand brushed up along her ribs in a slow, steady draw that ended just below the curve of her right breast. He massaged the skin there, letting her guess if he’d go further, then raised his hand and cupped the soft mound.

Reth whimpered and her hips jerked in reflex. The sound was everything Bull was looking for, and so he rolled the gentle weight of her breast beneath his palm to hear it again. She bent into the touch, breaking their kiss as her back curved into a bow to present more of herself to him. 

Bull knew better than to pass up that offer. He leaned in and placed his lips to her other breast, mouthing at it and letting his tongue swirl about the dusky peak of her nipple. The salty taste of her skin was fucking fantastic, the soft, panting moans she made even more so.

He spent several wonderful seconds there before he pulling himself away to make his way back up her body, all the while being mindful not to bump her with his horns. She exposed her throat to him as he kissed a trail upwards. Nipping lightly at her pulse, he let his right hand drop down along the flat plane of her stomach until he reached the junction between her thighs.

It was no surprise to find her bare, all elves were hairless in that regard, and he circled his fingers along the rise of her mound before dipping lower to her sex.

Bull sucked in sharply against her neck when he found her hot and ready for him. His fingers trailed around the delicate folds of her entrance, feeling that slick heat part as he pushed a finger inside and began to stroke her.

Reth made a short choking noise and ground down against his hand. Her nails dug into the muscles of his neck to the point of being painful, her pulse fluttering beneath his lips as he worked another finger inside her impossibly tight sex.

“By the damned.” He groaned aloud, not knowing or caring if she understood him in the slightest. “You’re so fucking wet.”

A tremor shuddered through her entire body at the sound of his voice, and that flipped some instinctual switch in his brain. Unable to wait any longer, Bull pulled his fingers free and made as if to reverse their positions. 

Reth stopped him by shoving his shoulders back down onto the furs. Leverage was all on her side and he hit the bedding with a woof of expelled breath. His bruised shoulder flared with a brief surge of pain at the contact, but the combination of whiskey and imminent sex was more than enough to dull it. 

The elf smiled, shaking her head with a chiding cluck of her tongue as she moved to pull his hands from her hips. Pinning them to the furs, she offered him a frank look. _“Bull lefas nul unth mata.”_

Bull’s eye narrowed. He wanted to be on top for this. Letting a girl ride him might be well and good when he was dealing with some barmaid looking for a night’s fun, but that was not what appealed right now. Reth was no barmaid, she wasn’t a bored noblewoman, wasn’t a neglected farmer’s wife looking to broaden her horizons; no, Reth was too fierce to be anything so civilized. She was willful, violent and with too much of the wild running through her blood.

It was part of what attracted him to her. That fierceness called out to him and Bull wouldn’t deny that there was a feral part of him that wanted to prove he was dominant. Yielding control was fine when his partner just needed that extra burst of confidence, but Reth didn’t need any reassurance. Every fiber of him wanted to lay her down and fuck the crazy elf until she was begging him for more.

The muscles in his arms bunched with tension. It was an effort of will to refrain from contesting the issue, but he forced himself to accept it. Easing back until he was fully reclined, Bull sighed heavily. “Fine, ladies’ choice.” 

Satisfied, Reth removed her hands from his wrists and promptly lowered them down to his belt buckle. He watched as she unfastened the heavy clasp and then moved on to unlace his pants. Where others might tease and play out the moment, she worked the fastenings loose and then jerked his pants right off his hips with an impatient grunt. 

The relief he felt to finally have his stiff cock finally spring free of its confines was almost painful in its intensity. The chilly air was a bit of a harsh greeting for such an important appendage, but it was worth it to see the look on Reth’s face.

For a few seconds, she simply stared down at his waist with wide eyes. Then, blowing out a short exhalation, she raked a hand through her hair. _“Respis el Fen’Harel.”_

“Huh?”

 _“Unthos alete niel larda.”_ She held out her open hands and spread them several inches apart. Nodding her head toward his cock, she moved them a good deal wider. _“Bull cien alete un halla.”_

He laughed, not above accepting a little flattery. “Well, thank you.”

She rolled her eyes and then shifted her weight ever so slightly. Rising up on her knees, she braced a hand against his chest and straightened her back in display of caramel skin and lean curves. Brushing her free hand down over her breasts, she traced a slow path down her front. Bull tracked the motion, amusement shifting back into lust in an instant. Once she was sure she had his attention, she looked him right in the eye and then reached back to grab his cock.

Bull made an undignified sound as cool fingers wrapped around his shaft and ran up along its length. She squeezed him lightly as she shimmied backwards into position over him. The head of his cock grazed against the wet heat of her core and his entire body jerked in reaction. Carefully, slowly, Reth guided him to her entrance and then rolled her hips downwards.

They both groaned, the smooth purr of Reth’s voice offsetting his deeper growl. Bull lost the ability to think of anything aside from how good it felt to be inside of her. He knew that she would be hot and wet, but her sex was so tight that it bordered on being painful. She could take only a few inches of him, stopping almost immediately and inhaling a sharp breath as her body tried to cope with the penetration.

She rested there for a few seconds before easing back upwards to bringher weight down one more. Reth kept the pace slow, rocking her hips as she gradually adjusted to his size.

It was maddening. Bull wanted to press further, to push into that delicious heat and lose himself inside of her. Instincts demanded he abandon the submissive posture and take matters into his own hands. The thought thundered in his pulse, pressure seeming to rise beneath his skin as every breath brought with it the heady smell of her arousal.

Bull fought it down. Reth’s entire body was trembling with strain already and he didn’t want to hurt her. His hands rose from the furs and he slid them up the length of her thighs. Her skin was soft, the hard muscles of her legs shifting and tensing underneath his palms she moved against him.

Her eyes flicked to his, an unreadable emotion flashing through them as his fingers slid up to clasp her hips. Plying the skin around her hipbones with his thumbs, Bull helped her rise and then gently guided her back down onto him without trying to control the pace.

Reth sighed quietly and accepted the assistance. Her tense muscles relaxed and the velvet heat of her sex parted around Bull’s cock as she took more and more of him. It was a small eternity of exquisite torture before her hips finally pressed down against his own. She made a satisfied sound and rested there for a moment as she caught her breath.

She’d taken almost all of him. Bull wouldn’t have believed it to be possible had he not been able to feel the vice-like grip of her sex around his length. He barely registered the fact that he was breathing hard, the air coming from his nose in short bursts are he forced himself to give her time to adjust.

His voice was rough as it rumbled from the base of his throat. “You alright?”

She looked up, smiled, and then brushed a hand along the defined muscles of her stomach as if trying to feel for him deep inside of her core. His cock twitched at the sight and Bull half-lifted himself from the furs. " _Reth_.”

She grinned and removed his hands from her hips once more. He growled in protest but that soon died off as Reth began riding him.

The elf started slow and hard, rolling her hips forward and back in a steady rhythm that brought her up so that she could grind down on him as she fell. Her walls clenched around him with each motion, squeezing tight around his cock in a silky grip that sent pleasurable contractions up the muscles of his ass and back.

His hands tightened into fists. The tension at the base of his cock was building, growing more pronounced with each little twist of Reth’s hips. He struggled to relax, to unclench, to fight the burning heat that was clouding his thoughts. This was too good to end just yet.

And Reth was making a damn spectacle of herself. The elf’s lean, strong body belonged in motion and she was doing everything in her power to keep it occupied. Her back curved with every rolling thrust of her hips, head lolling in simple abandon as she fucked herself against him. Soft moans tumbled from between her parted lips, intermingling with the harsh sounds he was making. 

Bull took it all in like a starving man, eye locked on the bobbing sway of her small breasts. He wanted to touch her, to taste the sheen of sweat that was making her skin shine a golden-orange. The desire was escalating beyond a simple want, it was growing into a steady, unrelenting need.

His composure collapsed, his entire body trembled with the strain of inaction. It didn’t take long for Reth to notice.

She slowed, sank down to take him fully, and then, with a smile that held a devil’s mischief, clenched her body and _squeezed_.

Bull did not decide to move. All he knew was that one moment, he was lying on his back, and the next, he was sitting upright on the furs and towering over Reth once more. She almost toppled out of his lap with the sudden shift but Bull wrapped an arm around her back and crushed her to his chest. His other hand flew up to tangle in her hair and he yanked her head back to bare the smooth column of her throat.

He glared down at her, something halfway between a growl and a moan rising from his chest. His control had frayed away and he could only feel the fiery burn of lust in his stomach. A distant voice warned him to ease up, but the warning was foreign and incomprehensible now. 

Reth didn’t struggle against the change in position. She hesitated briefly, studying his face through slitted eyes, and then lifted a hand and placed it on his shoulder. Without a word, she shifted her legs for a better angle and then went right back to fucking him.

It was an effort of will to keep hold of himself. Bull teetered on the edge of primal idiocy, his every instinct basic and unpredictable. His hand found her hip and he shoved her down on him, urging her to go faster, harder. Her nails clawed into his chest as he pushed further into her than ever before, an accompanying hiss from the elf conveying a fierce, manic approval that aroused him every bit as much as the sudden spike of pain did.

Reth stayed closed to him now, her knees pressing into his waist tightly, each panted breath hot on his neck. Every motion she made sent her small tits sliding against his chest, the firm peaks of her nipples hard and hot as they scraped along his skin.

Bull needed this. He used both hands to grab hold of her ass and dug his fingers deep into the muscle as he kneaded and pulled her against him. The pace of their fucking became discordant, Reth’s motions went jerky, her sharp gasps of breath rising in pitch as she rocked forward to press into the angle of his thrusts.

Bull roughly nuzzling Reth’s head to the side, put his lips right beside her pointed ear. “Just fucking cum. I wanna’ hear you do it.”

A convulsion ran through her entire body and it didn’t even matter that he’d spoken in kosith. She faltered in mid-thrust and Bull hurriedly ground her down into his lap. Her fingers scrambled madly across the skin of his back and she gasped out something that might have been his name, and then Reth was clenching around him as her orgasm swept over her.

She bit down on his neck as she came, the spike of pain casting Bull far over the edge. He uttered a curse and pulled her to him to hold her there as he pumped upwards and let go.

Pleasure fractured his system, the waves of tension and release almost unbearable as he pulsed and spilled himself in the deepest parts of her. His hips thrust on their own accord, his hands tightened on her ass, and Bull lost track of the world.

When he came back to himself, their harsh breathing filled the little cabin. Reth was limp in his arms, her chest heaving shallowly and all of her weight resting against him as her hand trailed mindlessly down his back, tracing the path of his spine in a long pattern.

Bull didn’t try to pull out and Reth didn’t try to move away. His muscles were warm and loose in the wake of his release and Bull’s cock still periodically twitched inside of her. Reth's face was still buried in the crook of his neck, the rapid patter of her heartbeat so strong that he could feel it in his own chest.

Almost a minute passed before Reth made a sleepy protest and lifted her hips. Bull helped her out of his lap and then fell backwards, dragging Reth down with him to sprawl on the bedroll.

She rolled onto her back and promptly appropriated his shoulder for a pillow. They lay side by side, still catching their breaths as the sweat cooled on their heated skin. It took a few minutes before Bull had the presence of mind to look over and ask: “You alright?”

Reth laughed, grey eyes dancing as she worked her chin into a short nod. “Reth...Reth very alright.”

“I’d fucking hope so.” He gave a short laugh of his own. Wrapping his arm around her waist, he pulled her closer to him. Reth turned on her side and hooked a leg over his hips, accepting the change of position as she move to rest her head on his chest. Already, the cold air was starting to make Bull shiver, so he flipped the top blanket of the furs over them.

The alcohol and exertion were calling out to him in a powerfully seductive song, but Bull did not fall immediately to sleep He was too aware of Reth moving around, nothing purposeful, just rubbing herself against his chest and the bearskin furs in idle, sliding motions as if to memorize the sensations. She released a low, pleased sound after a few interminable moments, finally settling down like a housecat that had found the right sunbeam to doze under.

Bull lay there, staring up at the cabin’s low ceiling, and in the waning aftermath of what had just occurred, a sense of uncertainty began to intrude upon his contentment. He’d thought about Reth and what it’d be like to bed her, the same consideration he gave most everything he wanted. There had been a clear picture in his mind, an idea so established that it bordered on certainty, of what that encounter would be like.

He knew sex, knew it well enough to consider himself versed in the many forms it could take. He’d had lovers of all races and either gender, experimented both with convention and the more exciting ways of breaking it. With that experience came an easy familiarity, a pervading sense of what to expect when it came to the physical and emotional responses. He knew how to pleasure another and find it with them, how to satisfy even if it were only part of a mission. Sex could be great fun, even when formulaic, always worthy of pursuit, even when the course proved predictable.

Tonight had been different and he wasn’t sure why. There had been nothing cerebral or calculated behind the sex. He’d fucked Reth because he’d wanted her so much that his body still felt hot with the need.

She was striking, but hardly the most beautiful woman he’d taken to bed. She obviously was no stranger to sex, but he’d had more talented lovers. Bull had slept with people he’d known longer, trusted more, certainly understood better. When it came down to it, Reth was a near stranger who didn’t understand most of the words that came out of his mouth.

In spite of all that, Bull couldn’t deny that he’d responded to her and responded hard. Whatever it was about her, whatever inspired that feeling, it had rendered sex into something wonderfully simple. Bull had fucked her for no other reason than because she was damn attractive and seeing her in pleasure had been worth an entire month of walking through the woods.

Even now, there was a dumb, possessive part of his brain that loved the fact that she was in his bed, that it was her hip under his hand. Something about her disrupted the order of his world, and Bull found that concerning.

He played with these turbulent thoughts for almost a minute before deciding to reestablish control. The Qun did not seem appropriate here, so he allowed cold rational to assert itself.

They probably had a few more days of travel before they reached Haven. Once they got there, Bull would contact the Ben-Hassrath and await further orders. There would be several days of waiting, during which he hoped that he and Reth would find a proper bed for the first of many, many, repeat performances. He had a lot of ideas on that account.

Eventually, however, new orders would arrive. Bull would need to go his way and Reth would need to go hers. He wasn’t sure where the elf was headed before their paths crossed, but she must have been going somewhere.

He toyed briefly with the idea of inviting her to join the Chargers before killing it dead in his mind. His mercenaries would be waiting for him back in Redcliffe, and as appealing as the idea was, he could not see Reth joining their numbers. She was not one to take orders, least of all from him if past history was any judge, and as capable as she might be, he wasn’t sure what she’d think of being a paid killer.

Besides, he didn’t fuck his crew. That was a rule and one that he considered very important. There was too much room for sore feelings there, to many mixed emotions that interfered with the job.

No, he would say his good-byes at Haven and part ways with her. Even if that meant slipping away, he’d try his best to make sure she was set up with whatever her plans might be, and then he’d have to make the decision the Ben-Hassrath demanded of him. Attachments were liabilities. Sometimes, that meant being an unfeeling bastard.

At his side, Reth murmured incomprehensible, sleepy nonsense before quieting. Her body felt very soft and warm against his. Bull closed his eye and settled back for sleep, allowing himself to be drawn down into the seductive darkness.

He would enjoy it while it lasted. When it came time, he’d make the necessary choice.

~o0o~


End file.
